Perhaps most well known for his 2001: A Space Odyssey, science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke has died. He died Wednesday at his home in Colombo, Sri Lanka (for those of us in the US, that would have been Tuesday afternoon).Arthur C. Clarke Quotes:
"Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering."
"They tell us absolutely nothing about intelligence elsewhere in the universe, but they do prove how rare it is on Earth." (Discussing UFOs)
"The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale."
"There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum."
"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."
"The inspirational value of the space program is probably of far greater importance to education than any input of dollars."
"It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value."
And finally, Clarke's Three Laws:
1. "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."
2. "The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."
3. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
2 comments:
those quips are sublime.
in particular, "either way, it's staggering". word.
Clarke was always one of those sci-fi geeks who never allowed life to make him jaded or cynical. For that, I will always like the man.
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