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4e44a13
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T]hese leaders must not believe they are actually being watched, for their behavior in no way reflects the possible existence of a set of values or ethical laws that supersedes their own dominion.
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leadership
good-behavior
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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31d4299
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Soon after her beloved young brother was killed, she asked me, "What is the purpose of grief? Does it serve any biological function?"
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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e6a31b0
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And it was difficult to imagine what answer Earth could possibly send, except a tactfully sympathetic, "Good-bye."
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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959594b
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It was idle to speculate, to build pyramids of surmise on a foundation of ignorance.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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1752ca1
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Floyd sometimes wondered if the Newspad, and the fantastic technology behind it, was the last word in man's quest for perfect communications. Here he was, far out in space, speeding away from Earth at thousands of miles an hour, yet in a few milliseconds he could see the headlines of any newspaper he pleased. (That very word "newspaper," of course, was an anachronistic hangover into the age of electronics.) The text was updated automaticall..
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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f99743b
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The trouble with cliche's, some philosopher remarked, probably with a yawn, is that they are so boringly true. But "love at first sight" is never boring."
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love-at-first-sight
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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b30d9b1
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My dear Rikki," Karellen retorted, "it's only by not taking the human race seriously that I retain what fragments of my once considerable mental powers I still possess!"
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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8ed815e
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life was not a joyride at an amusement park. It was a deadly serious affair and only through a combination of solid values, self-control, and a steady commitment to a worthwhile goal was there a chance to achieve happiness.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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6b8854f
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There were other thinkers, Bowman also found, who held even more exotic views. They did not believe that really advanced beings would possess organic bodies at all. Sooner or later, as their scientific knowledge progressed, they would get rid of the fragile, disease-and-accident-prone homes that Nature had given them, and which doomed them to inevitable death. They would replace their natural bodies as they wore out--or perhaps even before ..
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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96132af
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Here and there, set into the somber red, were rivers of bright yellow--incandescent Amazons, meandering for thousands of miles before they lost themselves in the deserts of this dying sun. Dying? No--that was a wholly false impression, born of human experience and the emotions aroused by the hues of sunset, or the glow of fading embers. This was a star that had left behind the fiery extravagances of its youth, had raced through the violets ..
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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1bd09bf
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It seemed altogether unfair and unreasonable that the sky should be so hard.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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d22ddc2
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How I envy them," said Colonel Jones. "Sometimes it's quite a relief to have something trivial to worry about."
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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512c13d
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Belief in God is apparently a psychological arti-fact of mammalian reproduction.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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056cb9e
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You know why Wainwright and his kind fear me, don't you?.. They fear that we know the truth about the origins of their faiths. How long, they wonder, have we been observing humanity? Have we watched Mohammad begin the hegira, or Moses giving the Jews their law? Do we know all the false in their stories they believe?
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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264d2c9
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He had already decided that X rays, sonic probes, neutron beams, and all other nondestructive means of investigation would be brought into play before he called up the heavy artillery of the laser. It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand; but perhaps men were barbarians, beside the creatures who had made this thing.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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94945de
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Floyd sometimes wondered if the Newspad, and the fantastic technology behind it, was the last word in man's quest for perfect communications.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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d36215f
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My God -- it's full of stars! -Dave Bowman.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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0577ede
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The knowledge that [he] had passed a loveless, institutionalized childhood and had escaped from his origins by prodigies of pure intellect, at the cost of all other human qualities, helped one to understand him--but not to like him.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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30dbe3a
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There could be no ghosts upon a world that had never known life.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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83ce7e0
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After the struggle for sheer existence, they had no energy left for a civilization.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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fc549a8
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It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand; but perhaps men were barbarians, beside the creatures who had made this thing.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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b3eda01
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All that had gone before was not a thousandth of what was yet to come; the story of this star had barely begun.
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future
hope
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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c39220c
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Now they were lords of the galaxy, and beyond the reach of time. They could rove at will among the stars, and sink like a subtle mist through the very interstices of space. But despite their godlike powers, they had not wholly forgotten their origin, in the warm slime of a vanished sea.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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29574b5
|
Some immaterial pattern of energy, throwing off a spray of radiation like the wake of a racing speedboat, had leaped from the face of the Moon, and was heading out toward the stars.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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ccdff27
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For relaxation he could always engage Hal in a large number of semimathematical games, including checkers, chess, and polyominoes. If Hal went all out, he could win any one of them; but that would be bad for morale. So he had been programmed to win only fifty percent of the time, and his human partners pretended not to know this.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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9aa3abc
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He pressed the button, and waited. Several minutes later, a metal arm moved out from the bunk, and a plastic nipple descended toward his lips. He sucked on it eagerly, and a warm, sweet fluid coursed down his throat, bringing renewed strength with every drop.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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1012567
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And if there was anything beyond that, its name could only be God.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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0c2b762
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I seem to be having difficulty--my first instructor was Dr. Chandra. He taught me to sing a song, it goes like this, 'Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do. I'm half crazy all for the love of you.'" The"
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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bcf34f1
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Jan had always been a good pianist--and now he was the finest in the world.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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6b2b1d0
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I am a HAL Nine Thousand computer Production Number 3. I became operational at the Hal Plant in Urbana, Illinois, on January 12, 1997.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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64d18b5
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You hide a Sun-powered device in darkness--only if you want to know when it is brought out into the light. In other words, the monolith may be some kind of alarm. And we have triggered it.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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ef74bb9
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They will say that the Universe has no purpose and no plan, that since a hundred suns explode every year in our Galaxy, at this very moment some race is dying in the depths of space. Whether that race has done good or evil during its lifetime will make no difference in the end: there is no divine justice, for there is no God.
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universe
good
god
galaxy
space
sun
race
justice
evil
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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d99db39
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Curnow had once remarked that Dr. Chandra had the sort of physique that could only be achieved by centuries of starvation.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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d4c6d3c
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Long ago it had been decided that, however inconsequential rudeness to robots might appear to be, it should be discouraged. All too easily, it could spread to human relationships as well.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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9808a85
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He lifted the telephone receiver and pressed it against the plastic of his helmet. If there had been a dialing sound he could have heard it through the conducting material. But, as he had expected, there was only silence. So--it was all a fake, though a fantastically careful one. And it was clearly not intended to deceive but rather--he hoped--to reassure. That was a very comforting thought; nevertheless he would not remove his suit until h..
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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bbb09b3
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Oh, I can think of many reasons. Perhaps it's a signal, so that any strange ship entering our universe will know where to look for life. Perhaps it marks the centre of galactic administration. Or perhaps--and somehow I feel that this is the real explanation--it's simply the greatest of all works of art. But it's foolish to speculate now. In a few hours we shall know the truth.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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0063749
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There's nothing left to struggle for, and there are too many distractions and entertainments. Do you realize that every day something like five hundred hours of radio and TV pour out over the various channels? If you went without sleep and did nothing else, you could follow less than a twentieth of the entertainment that's available at the turn of a switch! No wonder that people are becoming passive sponges - absorbing but never creating. D..
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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4e53ad4
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Here was a revelation which no one could doubt or deny; here, seen by unknown magic of Overlord science, were the true beginnings of all the world's great faiths. Most of them were noble and inspiring, but that was not enough. Within a few days, all mankind's multitudinous messaihs had lost their divinity. Beneath the fierce and passionless light of truth, faiths that had sustained millions for twice a thousand years vanished like morning d..
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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15a0a45
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A feeling of foreboding, and, indeed, of physical as well as psychological discomfort, had come over him. He suddenly recalled--and this did nothing at all to help--a phrase he had once come across: "Someone is walking over your grave."
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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9b70ee8
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As to the nature of that drive, one thing was now certain, even though all else was mystery. There were no jets of gas, no beams of ions or plasma thrusting Rama into its new orbit. No one put it better than Sergeant Professor Myron, when he said, in shocked
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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d85778b
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Many of the fundamental physical constants-which as far as one could see, God could have given any value He liked-are in fact very precised adjusted, or fine-tuned, to produce the only kind of Universe that makes our existence possible.
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possibility
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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4a61256
|
The outermost--Jupiter XXVII--moved backwards in an unstable path nineteen million miles from its temporary master. It was the prize in a perpetual tug-of-war between Jupiter and the Sun, for the planet was constantly capturing short-lived moons from the asteroid belt, and losing them again after a few million years. Only the inner satellites were its permanent property; the Sun could never wrest them from its grasp.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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88d07d6
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I hope you're right. Apart from that, won't there be trouble when he discovers what you're trying to do? Because he will, you know." "I'll take that risk. Besides, we understand each other rather well." The physicist toyed with his pencil and stared into space for a while. "It's a very pretty problem. I like it," he said simply. Then he dived into a drawer and produced an enormous writing pad, quite the biggest that Stormgren had ever seen...
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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bfcdb32
|
How obvious, now, was that mathematical ratio of its sides, the quadratic sequence 1:4:9! And how naive to have imagined that the series ended there, in only three dimensions!
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Arthur C. Clarke |