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We always thought the living Earth was a thing of beauty. It isn’t. Life has had to learn to defend itself against the planet’s random geological savagery.

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
Beauty
Learn
Living
Geological
Thought
Savagery
Earth
Random
Thing
Defend
Always
Planet
Life
Planets

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The creation of wealth is certainly not to be despised, but in the long run the only human activities really worthwhile are the search for knowledge, and the creation of beauty. This is beyond argument, the only point of debate is which comes first.
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The intelligent minority of this world will mark 1 January 2001 as the real beginning of the 21st century and the Third Millennium.
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Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
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Religion is a byproduct of fear.
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Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the nonexistence of Zeus or Thor, but they have few followers now.
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Judge me by my deeds, though they are few, rather than my words, though they are many.
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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.
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The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.
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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.
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The West needs to relearn what the rest of the world has never forgotten - that there is nothing sinful in leisure as long as it does not degenerate into mere sloth.
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One of the biggest roles of science fiction is to prepare people to accept the future without pain and to encourage a flexibility of the mind. Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
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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.
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The only way to define your limits is by going beyond them.
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'2001' was written in an age which now lies beyond one of the great divides in human history we are sundered from it forever by the moment when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out on to the Sea of Tranquility. Now history and fiction have become inexorably intertwined.
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Now I understand,” said the last man.
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How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.
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I sometimes think that the universe is a machine designed for the perpetual astonishment of astronomers.
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