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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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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
Benevolent
Protect
Higher
Ways
Free
Power
Way
Protects

More quotes by Arthur C. Clarke

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I sometimes think that the universe is a machine designed for the perpetual astonishment of astronomers.
Arthur C. Clarke
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A hundred years ago, the electric telegraph made possible-indeed, inevitable-the United States of America. The communications satellite will make equally inevitable a United Nations of Earth let us hope that the transition period will not be equally bloody.
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.
Arthur C. Clarke
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We stand now at the turning point between two eras. Behind us is a past to which we can never return... The coming of the rocket brought to an end a million years of isolation... the childhood of our race was over and history as we know it began.
Arthur C. Clarke
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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.
Arthur C. Clarke
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Open the pod bay doors, Hal.
Arthur C. Clarke
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I have never grown up, but I will never stop growing.
Arthur C. Clarke
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If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run-and often in the short one-the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.
Arthur C. Clarke
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I have great faith in optimism as a guiding principle, if only because it offers us the opportunity of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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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All human plans [are] subject to ruthless revision by Nature, or Fate, or whatever one preferred to call the powers behind the Universe.
Arthur C. Clarke
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Until we get rid of religion, we won't be able to conduct the search for God.
Arthur C. Clarke
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There were some things that only time could cure. Evil men could be destroyed, but nothing could be done with good men who were deluded.
Arthur C. Clarke
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There is the possibility that humankind can outgrow its infantile tendencies, as I suggested in 'Childhood's End.' But it is amazing how childishly gullible humans are.
Arthur C. Clarke
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And because, in all the Galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the fields of stars they sowed, and sometimes they reaped. And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed.
Arthur C. Clarke
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I'm quite fond of the writer who told a beginning author, If you've got a message, use Western Union.
Arthur C. Clarke
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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.
Arthur C. Clarke
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Belief in God is apparently a psychological artifact of mammalian reproduction.
Arthur C. Clarke
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Science fiction seldom attempts to predict the future. More often than not, it tries to prevent the future.
Arthur C. Clarke
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Perhaps no other year before or since 1984 has been awaited with such eager anticipation.
Arthur C. Clarke