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Many, and some of the most pressing, of our terrestrial problems can be solved only by going into space. Long before it was a vanishing commodity, the wilderness as the preservation of the world was proclaimed by Thoreau. In the new wilderness of the Solar System may lie the future preservation of mankind.

Arthur C. Clarke

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Arthur C. Clarke
Age: 90 †
Born: 1917
Born: December 16
Died: 2008
Died: March 19
Engineer
Explorer
Film Writer
Inventor
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Scientist
Screenwriter
Writer
Minehead
Somerset
Arthur Charles Clarke
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke
Charles Willis
Arthur Clarke
Lying
Solved
Future
Preservation
Thoreau
Problem
Commodity
Terrestrial
May
Wilderness
Proclaimed
Many
Mankind
Vanishing
Going
Problems
Pressing
Long
System
Solar
World
Space
Predictions

More quotes by Arthur C. Clarke

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Why, Robert Singh often wondered, did we give our hearts to friends whose life spans are so much shorter than our own?
Arthur C. Clarke
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You can't have it both ways. You can't have both free will and a benevolent higher power who protects you from yourself.
Arthur C. Clarke
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There's a passage about 'rivers of molten rock that wound their way... until they cooled and lay like twisted dragon-shapes vomited from the tormented earth.' That's a perfect description: how did Tolkien know, a quarter century before anyone ever saw a picture of Io? Talk about Nature imitating Art.
Arthur C. Clarke
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The crossing of space ... may do much to turn men's minds outwards and away from their present tribal squabbles. In this sense, the rocket, far from being one of the destroyers of civilisation, may provide the safety-value that is needed to preserve it.
Arthur C. Clarke
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The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.
Arthur C. Clarke
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We seldom stop to think that we are still creatures of the sea, able to leave it only because, from birth to death, we wear the water-filled space suits of our skins.
Arthur C. Clarke
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The future is not to be forecast, but created.
Arthur C. Clarke
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New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can't be done. 2) It probably can be done, but it's not worth doing. 3) I knew it was a good idea all along!
Arthur C. Clarke
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It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars.
Arthur C. Clarke
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The truth, as always, will be far stranger.
Arthur C. Clarke
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Human judges can show mercy. But against the laws of nature, there is no appeal.
Arthur C. Clarke
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The realisation that our small planet is only one of many worlds gives mankind the perspective it needs to realise sooner that our own world belongs to all its creatures.
Arthur C. Clarke
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He found it both sad and fascinating that only through an artificial universe of video images could she establish contact with the real world.
Arthur C. Clarke
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To find anything comparable with our forthcoming ventures into space, we must go back far beyond Columbus, far beyond Odysseus-far, indeed, beyond the first ape-man. We must contemplate the moment, now irrevocably lost in the mists of time, when the ancestor off all of us came crawling out of the sea.
Arthur C. Clarke
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One theory which can no longer be taken very seriously is that UFOs are interstellar spaceships.
Arthur C. Clarke
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No communication technology has ever disappeared, but instead becomes increasingly less important as the technological horizon widens.
Arthur C. Clarke
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The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be.
Arthur C. Clarke
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The moment when one first meets a great work of art has an impact that can never again be recaptured.
Arthur C. Clarke
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. . . Moon-Watcher felt the first faint twinges of a new and potent emotion. It was a vague and diffuse sense of envy--of dissatisfaction with his life. He had no idea of its cause, still less of its cure but discontent had come into his soul, and he had taken one small step toward humanity.
Arthur C. Clarke
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It is really quite amazing by what margins competent but conservative scientists and engineers can miss the mark, when they start with the preconceived idea that what they are investigating is impossible.
Arthur C. Clarke