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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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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
Problem
Fiction
Attempting
Trying
Lines
Define
Almost
Draw
Knowing
Popular
Though
Draws
Lying
Exactly
Undertaking
Difficult
Lies
Undertakings
Science
Line
Pornography
More quotes by Arthur C. Clarke
Now, before you make a movie, you have to have a script, and before you have a script, you have to have a story though some avant-garde directors have tried to dispense with the latter item, you'll find their work only at art theaters.
Arthur C. Clarke
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke
Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
Arthur C. Clarke
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.
Arthur C. Clarke
They had not yet attained the stupefying boredom of omnipotence their experiments did not always succeed.
Arthur C. Clarke
The Shuttle is to space flight what Lindbergh was to commercial aviation.
Arthur C. Clarke
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
I can never look now at the Milky Way without wondering from which of those banked clouds of stars the emissaries are coming. If you will pardon so commonplace a simile, we have set off the fire alarm and have nothing to do but to wait. I do not think we will have to wait for long.
Arthur C. Clarke
Please help keep the world clean: others may wish to use it. Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence. The only place success comes before work is a dictionary Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
Arthur C. Clarke
Training was one thing, reality another.
Arthur C. Clarke
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.
Arthur C. Clarke
The only real problem in life is what to do next.
Arthur C. Clarke
If man survives for as long as the least successful of the dinosaurs-those creatures whom we often deride as nature's failures-then we may be certain of this: for all but a vanishingly brief instant near the dawn of history, the word 'ship' will mean- 'spaceship.'
Arthur C. Clarke
The truth, as always, will be far stranger.
Arthur C. Clarke
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
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.
Arthur C. Clarke
If children have interests, then education happens.
Arthur C. Clarke
In this single galaxy of ours there are eighty-seven thousand million suns. [...] In challenging it, you would be like ants attempting to label and classify all the grains of sand in all the deserts of the world. [...] It is a bitter thought, but you must face it. The planets you may one day possess. But the stars are not for man.
Arthur C. Clarke
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
Look, whispered Chuck, and George lifted his eyes to heaven. (There is always a last time for everything.) Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.
Arthur C. Clarke