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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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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
Ends
Gullible
Humans
Infantile
Suggested
Humankind
Tendencies
Amazing
Childhood
Childishly
Possibility
Outgrow

More quotes by 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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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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It was one thing to have guessed it, another to have had that guess confirmed beyond possibility of refutation.
Arthur C. Clarke
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Those wanderers must have looked on Earth, circling safely in the narrow zone between fire and ice, and must have guessed that it was the favourite of the Sun's children.
Arthur C. Clarke
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At the present rate of progress, it is almost impossible to imagine any technical feat that cannot be achieved - if it can be achieved at all - within the next few hundred years.
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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Attempting to define science fiction is an undertaking almost as difficult, though not so popular, as trying to define pornography... In both pornography and SF, the problem lies in knowing exactly where to draw the line.
Arthur C. Clarke
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Moses Kaldor had always loved mountains they made him feel nearer to the God whose nonexistence he still sometimes resented.
Arthur C. Clarke
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I believe any malevolent supercivilisation would have rapidly self-destructed as we may be in the process of doing ourselves. If we do have contact, physical contact with aliens, I think it will be benign.
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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Science demands patience.
Arthur C. Clarke
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The entire sweep of human history from the dark ages into the unknown future was considerably less important at the moment than the question of a certain girl and her feelings toward him.
Arthur C. Clarke
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The best proof of intelligent life in space is that it hasn't come here.
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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My objection to organized religion is the premature conclusion to ultimate truth that it represents.
Arthur C. Clarke
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It may be that the old astrologers had the truth exactly reversed, when they believed that the stars controlled the destinies of men. The time may come when men control the destinies of stars.
Arthur C. Clarke
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I'm sometimes asked how I would like to be remembered. I've had a diverse career as a writer, underwater explorer, space promoter and science populariser. Of all these, I want to be remembered most as a writer - one who entertained readers, and, hopefully, stretched their imagination as well.
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 intelligent minority of this world will mark 1 January 2001 as the real beginning of the 21st century and the Third Millennium.
Arthur C. Clarke