Arthur C. Clarke (December 16, 1917 - March 19, 2008) was one of the
world's best-selling authors of science fiction and was widely
considered one of the masters of the genre. Deemed on par with authors
like Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein, he was especially identified
with his novels Childhood's End, Rendezvous with Rama, and 2001:
A Space Odyssey. Clarke's fiction is credited with combining
flawlessly accurate technical details with such philosophically
expansive themes as "spiritual" rebirth and the search for man's place
in the universe. The recipient of at least three Hugo Awards and two
Nebulas, as well as a host of other acknowledgements, he was also well
recognized as an inventor, an editor, and a science commentator.
Of his various technical and scientific papers, one of them, "Can Rocket
Stations Give Worldwide Radio Coverage?" (Wireless World, 1945)
introduced the concept that geostationary satellites could make
excellent telecommunications relays. So influential was this work that
Clarke is credited as the inventor of the first communications
satellite, a scientific development which earned him the gold medal of
the Franklin Institute, the Lindbergh Award, the Marconi Award, the
Vikram Sarabhai Professorship of the Physical Research Laboratory,
Ahmedabad, and the Fellowship of King's College, London. In addition,
the geostationary orbit (at 42,000 kilometers above Earth) is named "The
Clarke Orbit". In 1954, almost ten years after this development,
Clarke's correspondence with Dr. Harry Wexler (then chief of the
Scientific Services Division, US Weather Bureau) led to a new branch of
meteorology that utilized rockets and satellites for weather
forecasting. (Click
here for full article)
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A country's armed forces can no longer defend it; the most they can
promise is the destruction of the attacker.
A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many
regrets.
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.
All explorers are seeking something they have lost. It is seldom that
they find it, and more seldom still that the attainment brings them
greater happiness than the quest.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Any teacher that can be replaced by a machine should be!
As every researcher just out of college knows, scientists of over fifty
are good for nothing but board meetings, and should at all costs be kept
out of the laboratory!
As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have
superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and
self-destroying.
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.
Before you become too entranced with gorgeous gadgets and mesmerizing
video displays, let me remind you that information is not knowledge,
knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight. Each grows out of
the other, and we need them all.
CNN is one of the participants in the war. I have a fantasy where Ted
Turner is elected president but refuses because he doesn't want to give
up power.
Even educated people need some emotional crutch, and it is nice to feel
that somebody up there is looking after your concerns. It is harmless
unless it becomes an obsession.
For much of history, religion may have been a necessary evil, but why
has it been more evil than necessary?
How inappropriate to call this planet 'Earth,' when it is clearly
'Ocean.'
Human judges can show mercy. But against the laws of nature, there is no
appeal.
I am an optimist; anyone interested in the future has to be, otherwise
he would simply shoot himself.
I don't believe in God but I'm very interested in Her.
I don't pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly
worth thinking about.
I have great faith in optimism as a guiding principle, if only because
it offers us the opportunity of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I think it's probable that as we develop, we'll move our minds into our
machines. You could experience anything, be anywhere, you see. Get an
infinite number of real universes as well as imaginary universes.
I would defend the liberty of consenting adult creationists to practice
whatever intellectual perversions they like in the privacy of their own
homes; but it is also necessary to protect the young and innocent.
I'm appalled by what we all see on the news every day- massacres,
atrocities, injustices, outrages of all kinds. When I see what's
happening, I sometimes wonder if the human race deserves to survive.
I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It's just been too
intelligent to come here.
I'm sure we would not have had men on the Moon if it had not been for
Wells and Verne and the people who write about this and made people
think about it. I'm rather proud of the fact that I know several
astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books.
I've been saying for a long time that I'm hoping to find intelligent
life in Washington.
I've combined all my beliefs into this phrase I've been circulating:
'Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses.'
If I was a religious person, I would consider creationism nothing less
than blasphemy. Do its adherents imagine that God is a cosmic hoaxer who
has created that whole vast fossil record for the sole purpose of
misleading mankind?
If our wisdom fails to match our science, we will have no second chance.
For there will be no one to carry our dreams across another Dark Age,
when the dust of all our cities incarnadines the sunsets of the world.
If the house is to be demolished tomorrow anyhow, people seem to feel,
we may as well burn the furniture today.
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.
Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of
insanity?
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
It is amazing how childishly gullible humans are. There are, for
example, so many different religions, each of them claiming to have the
truth, each saying that their truths are clearly superior to the truths
of others. How can someone possibly take any of them seriously?
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.
It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to
create him.
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.
It must be wonderful to be seventeen, and to know everything.
It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not
understand.
My objection to organized religion is the premature conclusion to
ultimate truth that it represents.
New ideas pass through three periods: it can't be done, it probably can
be done, but it's not worth doing, and I knew it was a good idea all
along!
One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked
by religion. So now people assume that religion and morality have a
necessary connection. But the basis of morality is really very simple
and doesn't require religion at all.
Perhaps we should thank the Taliban for finishing the task the Crusades
began nine hundred years ago- proving beyond further dispute that
Religion is incompatible with Civilization.
Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective
stories.
Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as
reading sex manuals without the software. In both cases the cure is
simple though usually very expensive.
Religion is a disease promoted by starvation, because hungry people
hallucinate, and then pray for food. This is why so many religions
encourage fasting: it weakens the mind.
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
non-existence of Zeus or Thor- but they have few followers now.
Science fiction seldom attempts to predict the future. More often than
not, it tries to prevent the future.
Science is the only religion of mankind.
Technology is really civilization, let's face it.
The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's
the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.
The greatest problem of the future is civilizing the human race.
The information age has been driven and dominated by technopreneurs. We
now have to apply these technologies in saving lives, improving
livelihoods and lifting millions of people out of squalor, misery and
suffering. In other words, our focus must now move from the geeks to the
meek.
The inspirational value of the space program is probably of far greater
importance to education than any input of dollars... A whole generation
is growing up which has been attracted to the hard disciplines of
science and engineering by the romance of space.
The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry,
or depressing its contents seemed to be.
The Muslims are behaving like Christians, I'm afraid.
The only real problem in life is what to do next.
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a
little way past them into the impossible.
The psychologist who famously remarked that chastity was the rarest of
all sexual perversions might have added that Religion was the most
common.
The Solar System is rather a large place, though whether it will be
large enough for so quarrelsome an animal as homo sapiens remains to be
seen.
The statement that God created man in his own image is ticking like a
time bomb in the foundations of Christianity.
The universe must be full of voices, calling from star to star in a
myriad tongues. One day we shall join that cosmic conversation.
There is a special sadness in achievement, in the knowledge that a
long-desired goal has been attained at last, and that life must now be
shaped toward new ends.
There is a time to battle against Nature, and a time to obey her. True
wisdom lies in making the right choice.
There is a type of mind that will believe anything if it is sufficiently
fantastic, and it is a waste of time arguing with it. No one has ever
received much thanks for exposing credulity.
There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a
vacuum.
This is the first age that's ever paid much attention to the future,
which is a little ironic since we may not have one.
Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are
not. Both are equally terrifying.
Unfortunately, most people do not understand even the basic elements of
statistics and probability, which is why astrologers and advertising
agencies flourish.
Utopia is very dull. That's the problem with science fiction. Smashing
things is more interesting.
We have to abandon the idea that schooling is something restricted to
youth. How can it be, in a world where half the things a man knows at 20
are no longer true at 40- and half the things he knows at 40 hadn't been
discovered when he was 20?
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.
What is life but organized energy?
What we need is a machine that will let us see the other guy's point of
view.
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is
possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is
impossible, he is very probably wrong.
When you finally understand the universe, it will not only be stranger
than you imagine, it will be stranger than you can imagine.
Why is it that almost every man, when confronted by an unhappy woman,
immediately assumes that her unhappiness is somehow related to him?
You will find men like him in all of the world's religions. They know
that we represent reason and science, and, however confident they may be
in their beliefs, they fear that we will overthrow their gods. Not
necessarily through any deliberate act, but in a subtler fashion.
Science can destroy a religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving
its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the
nonexistance of Zeus or Thor, but they have few followers now.
Categories:
Arthur C. Clarke,
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