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135747c
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Instantly, there had been cries of protest from the industrial archaeologists, outraged at such vandalism, and from the naturalists, who pointed out that the penguins simply loved the abandoned pipeline.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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51639c4
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They had forgotten much, but they did not know it. They were as perfectly fitted to their environment as it was to them--for both had been designed together. What was beyond the walls of the city was no concern of theirs; it was something that had been shut out of their minds. Diaspar was all that existed, all that they needed, all that they could imagine. It mattered nothing to them that Man had once possessed the stars.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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045e85d
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There were, however, a few exceptions. One was Norma Dodsworth, the poet, who had not unpleasantly drunk but had been sensible enough to pass out before any violent action proved necessary. He had been deposited, not very gently, on the lawn, where it was hoped that a hyena would give him a rude awakening. For all practical purposes he could, therefore, be regarded as absent.
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humorous
funny
drink
drunk
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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764deb9
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In Lys, it seemed, all love began with mental contact, and it might be months or years before a couple actually met. In this way, Hilvar explained, there could be no false impressions, no deceptions, on either side. Two people whose minds were open to one another could hide no secrets.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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a714d23
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Men had sought beauty in many forms--in sequences of sound, in lines upon paper, in surfaces of stone, in the movements of the human body, in colours ranged through space. All these media still survived in Diaspar and down the ages others had been added to them. No one was yet certain if all the possibilities of art had been discovered, or if it had any meaning outside the mind of Man. And the same was true of love.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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18c04c7
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It was some kind of cosmic switching device, routing the traffic of the stars through unimaginable dimensions of space and time. He was passing through a Grand Central Station of the galaxy.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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e86286b
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He wanted to close his eyes and shut out the pearly nothingness that surrounded him, but that was an act of a coward and he would not yield to it.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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157ca09
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Meteorites don't fall on the Earth. They fall on the Sun and the Earth gets in the way." - John W. Campbell"
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science
science-fiction
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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91d0f76
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So the problem of Evil never really existed. To expect the universe to be benevolent was like imagining one could always win at a game of pure chance.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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06ef32b
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Death focuses the mind on the things that really matter: why are we here, and what should we do?
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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bfffc7b
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The Lassans were insatiably inquisitive, and the concept of privacy was almost unknown to them. A Please Do Not Disturb sign was often regarded as a personal challenge, which led to interesting complications...
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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b1054c3
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Myron, like countless NCO's before him, had discovered the ideal compromise between power and responsibility.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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9b08d1d
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It was the end of civilization, the end of all that men had striven for since the beginning of time. In the space of a few days, humanity had lost its future, for the heart of any race is destroyed, and its will to survive is utterly broken, when its children are taken from it.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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7b2b045
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Absence of noise is not a natural condition; all human senses require some input. If they are deprived of it, the mind manufactures its own substitutes.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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598c2e5
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There's an ancient philosophical joke that's much subtler than it seems. Question: Why is the Universe here? Answer: Where else would it be?
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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8a6b4b2
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There was awe, and there was also incredulity--sheer disbelief that the dead Moon, of all worlds, could have sprung this fantastic surprise.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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c90c91e
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No wonder that people are becoming passive sponges--absorbing but never creating. Did you know that the average viewing time per person is now three hours a day? Soon people won't be living their own lives any more. It will be a full-time job keeping up with the various family serials on TV!
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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d14c6f5
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Don't forget, as you enjoy your mild spring days and peaceful summer evenings, how lucky you are to live in the temperate region of the Solar System, where the air never freezes and the rocks never melt... Earthlight by Arthur C. Clarke
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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cf18bb8
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They would probably never even know that the human race existed. Such monumental indifference was worse than any deliberate insult. When
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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90d145b
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That requires as much power as a small radio transmitter--and rather similar skills to operate. For it's the application of the power, not its amount, that matters. How long do you think Hitler's career as a dictator of Germany would have lasted, if wherever he went a voice was talking quietly in his ear? Or if a steady musical note, loud enough to drown all other sounds and to prevent sleep, filled his brain night and day? Nothing brutal, ..
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world
passivity
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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28c5f06
|
You will find men like him in all 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 religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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e3e987e
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Even more alarming were persistent rumors that someone had smuggled an Emotion Amplifier on board 'Mentor'. The so-called joy machines were banned on all planets, except under strict medical control; but there would always be people to whom reality was not good enough, and who would want to try something better.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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88c450f
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The dismantling of the vast and wholly parasitic armaments industry had given an unprecedented--sometimes, indeed, unhealthy--boost to the world economy. No longer were vital raw materials and brilliant engineering talents swallowed up in a virtual black hole--or, even worse, turned to destruction. Instead, they could be used to repair the ravages and neglect of centuries, by rebuilding the world.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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edb2422
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all that he had ever been, at every moment of his life, was being transferred to safer keeping. Even as one David Bowman ceased to exist, another became immortal.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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f3724fa
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Could we go into your room?" she asked. "I knew it. I knew it," he said, spinning around and sliding quickly toward his door. "It's finally happend, just like in dreams. An intelligent, beautiful woman is going to declare her undying affection"
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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580d4c5
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Men knew better than they realized, when they placed the abode of the gods beyond the reach of gravity.
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gravity
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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f823469
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And eventually even the brain might go. As the seat of consciousness, it was not essential; the development of electronic intelligence had proved that. The conflict between mind and machine might be resolved at last in the eternal truce of complete symbiosis.... But
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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64fb5f9
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All bureaucracies are the same. They drain the life out of the truly creative people and develop mindless paper-pushers as their critical mass.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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362d243
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a well-stocked mind is safe from boredom.
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mind
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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9aef405
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Tom hated to admit defeat, even in matters far less important than this. He believed that all problems could be solved if they were tackled in the right way, with the right equipment. This was a challenge to his scientific ingenuity; the fact that there were many lives involved was immaterial. Dr. Tom Lawson had no great use for human beings, but he did respect the Universe. This was a private fight between him and It.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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aa51465
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Moon-Watcher and his companions had no recollection of what they had seen, after the crystal had ceased to cast its hypnotic spell over their minds and to experiment with their bodies. The next day, as they went out to forage, they passed it with scarcely a second thought; it was now part of the disregarded background of their lives. They could not eat it, and it could not eat them; therefore it was not important.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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4bb9d13
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No electronic computer can match the human brain at associating apparently irrelevant facts.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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d25751f
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A hundred failures would not matter, when one single success could change the destiny of the world.
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persistence
learning
success
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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db1b7cf
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No single individual, however eccentric or brilliant, could affect the enormous inertia of a society that had remained virtually unchanged for over a billion years.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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d4ed179
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Poole and Bowman had often humorously referred to themselves as caretakers or janitors aboard a ship that could really run itself. They would have been astonished, and more than a little indignant, to discover how much truth that jest contained.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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05acd23
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The existence of so much leisure would have created tremendous problems a century before. Education had overcome most of these, for a well stocked mind is safe from boredom.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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c4b62a3
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Discovery was no longer a happy ship.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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6385cbc
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Atheism is unprovable, so uninteresting. However unlikely it is, we can never be certain that God once existed--and has now shot off to infinity, where no one can ever find him... Like Gautama Buddha, I take no position on this subject.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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07ce1e8
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Any man who had ever worked in a hardened missile site would have felt at home in Clavius. Here on the Moon were the same arts and hardware of underground living, and of protection against a hostile environment; but here they had been turned to the purposes of peace. After ten thousand years, Man had at last found something as exciting as war.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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215a98f
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He had sometimes wondered if the real reason why men sought danger was that only thus could they find the companionship and solidarity which they unconsciously craved.
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humanity
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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7fa06aa
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The confrontation lasted about five minutes; then the display died out as quickly as it had begun, and everyone drank his fill of the muddy water. Honor had been satisfied; each group had staked its claim to its own territory.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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00e38dc
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Otto would pull the trigger at the slightest provocation and you, Michael, would agonize aver its morality even if your life were threatened. I'm the tiebreaker.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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571fe17
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But was even this the end? A few mystically inclined biologists went still further. They speculated, taking their cues from the beliefs of many religions, that mind would eventually free itself from matter. The robot body, like the flesh-and-blood one, would be no more than a stepping-stone to something which, long ago, men had called "spirit." And if there was anything beyond that, its name could only be God."
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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3630a42
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A major part of his job was deciding when warnings could be ignored, when they could be dealt with at leisure--and when they had to be treated as real emergencies. If he paid equal attention to all the ship's cries for help, he would never get anything done. He
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Arthur C. Clarke |