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People go through four stages before any revolutionary development: 1. It's nonsense, don't waste my time. 2. It's interesting, but not important. 3. I always said it was a good idea. 4. I thought of it first.

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
Ideas
Waste
Firsts
Development
First
Stage
Important
Four
Good
Interesting
Always
Idea
Stages
Time
Thought
Nonsense
People
Change
Revolutionary

More quotes by Arthur C. Clarke

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The numbers of distinct human societies or nations, when our race is twice its present age, may be far greater than the total number of all the men who have ever lived up to the present time.
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I have never grown up, but I will never stop growing.
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Whether we are based on carbon or on silicon makes no fundamental difference we should each be treated with appropriate respect.
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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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Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software.
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No one of intelligence resents the inevitable.
Arthur C. Clarke
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Now I'm a scientific expert that means I know nothing about absolutely everything.
Arthur C. Clarke
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If children have interests, then education happens.
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Science fiction seldom attempts to predict the future. More often than not, it tries to prevent the future.
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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.
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What we need is a machine that will let us see the other guy's point of view.
Arthur C. Clarke
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Perhaps no other year before or since 1984 has been awaited with such eager anticipation.
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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?
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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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Deep beneath the surface of the Sun, enormous forces were gathering. At any moment, the energies of a million hydrogen bombs might burst forth in the awesome explosion.... Climbing at millions of miles per hour, an invisible fireball many times the size of Earth would leap from the Sun and head out across space.
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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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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Science is the only religion of mankind.
Arthur C. Clarke
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Never attribute to malevolence what is merely due to incompetence
Arthur C. Clarke
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A wise man once said that all human activity is a form of play. And the highest form of play is the search for Truth, Beauty and Love. What more is needed? Should there be a ‘meaning’ as well, that will be a bonus? If we waste time looking for life’s meaning, we may have no time to live — or to play.
Arthur C. Clarke