Arthur C. Clarke citáty

strana 5

„Každá dostatečně vyspělá technologie se rovná magii.“

„Jsem si jistý, že vesmír je plný inteligentního života. Je však příliš inteligentní na to, aby sem přišel.“

„Ale žít jenom proto, aby člověk žil, to je dost málo. Život musí obsahovat hodnoty, pro které stojí za to žít.“

„Existují dvě možnosti. Buď jsme ve vesmíru sami, nebo nejsme. Obě jsou stejně děsivé.“

„Muži, na rozdíl od žen, mohou myslet na dvě věci zároveň.“

„Život musí obsahovat hodnoty, pro které stojí za to žít.“

„Život musí obsahovat hodnoty, pro které stojí za to žít.“

„Trvalo několik tisíc let, než lidstvo přišlo na to, že existuje několik zaměstnání, která by neměli zastávat lidé, kteří se o ně dobrovolně hlásí, a obzváště tehdy, když projevují příšišné nadšení.“

„Komunikační technologie jsou nezbytné, ale ne dostačující k tomu, aby spolu lidé vycházeli.“

„Jediným způsobem, jak zjistit meze možného, je odvážit se alespoň malý kousek za hranice nemožného.“

„Pokročilá věda se nedá odlišit od magie.“

„Vesmír je nekonečný a realita zřejmě překoná veškeré naše představy.“

„Věda je jediným náboženstvím lidstva.“

„Když význačný, avšak postarší vědec konstatuje, že je něco možné, má skoro jistě pravdu. Když konstatuje, že něco je nemožné, velmi pravděpodobně se mýlí.“

„Jev létajících talířů nám nic neříká o inteligenci někde ve vesmíru, ale zato dokazuje, jak je vzácná na Zemi.“

„Politici by měli číst science-fiction, ne detektivky a westerny.“

„Jediný způsob, jak se můžeme dostat za hranice možného, je ponořit se do nemožného.“

„Nevěřím v astrologii; jsem Střelec a ti jsou skeptičtí.“

„Dostatečně pokročilou technologii nelze odlišit od magie.“

„Kdybychom se z dějin vynálezů a objevování měli poučit jen o jediné věci, tak by to byla ta, že i ta nejodvážnější proroctví nakonec vypadají až směšně konzervativně.“

„Nadměrný zájem o patologické chování byl sám o sobě patologický.“

„Neexistovala žádná náhrada reality; člověk by si měl být vědom imitací.“

“The intelligent minority of this world will mark 1 January 2001 as the real beginning of the 21st century and the Third Millennium.”

“Long ago, he had made that choice between work and life that can seldom be avoided at the highest levels of human endeavor … Any fool could shuffle genes, and most did. But whether or not history gave him credit, few men could have achieved what he had done — and was about to do.”

“The dinosaurs disappeared because they could not adapt to their changing environment. We shall disappear if we cannot adapt to an environment that now contains spaceships, computers — and thermonuclear weapons.”

“Meanwhile, among all its countless other effects upon human culture, Starglider had brought to its climax a process that was already well under way. It had put an end to the billions of the words of pious gibberish with which apparently intelligent men had addled their minds for centuries.”

“If the artist did not know his goal, even the most miraculous of tools could not find it for him.”

“The fact that we have not yet found the slightest evidence for life — much less intelligence — beyond this Earth does not surprise or disappoint me in the least. Our technology must still be laughably primitive, we may be like jungle savages listening for the throbbing of tom-toms while the ether around them carries more words per second than they could utter in a lifetime.”

“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.”

“2001 was written in an age which now lies beyond one of the great divides in human history; we are sundered from it forever by the moment when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out on to the Sea of Tranquility. Now history and fiction have become inexorably intertwined.”

“Since women are better at producing babies, presumably Nature has given men some talent to compensate. But for the moment I can’t think of it.”

“If the WormCam had shown nothing else, he thought, it was this, with pitiless clarity: that the lives of most humans had been miserable and short, deprived of freedom and joy and comfort, their brief moments in the light reduced to sentences to be endured.”

“Any teacher that can be replaced by a machine should be!”

“Belief in God is apparently a psychological artifact of mammalian reproduction.”

“Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society.”

“It is not my duty as an historian to predict the future, only to observe and interpret the past. But its lesson is clear enough; we have lived too long out of contact with reality, and now the time has come to rebuild our lives.”

“One fail-safe after another had let them down. Helped by the ionospheric storm, the sheer perversity of inanimate things struck again.”

“All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landings there.”

“The fates could not possibly be so malevolent, now that he had only a few hundred meters to go.
He was whistling in the dark, of course. How many aircraft had crashed at the very edge of the runway, after safely crossing an ocean? How many times had machines or muscles failed when there were only millimeters to go? Every possible piece of luck, bad as well as good, happened to somebody, somewhere. He had no right to expect any special treatment.”

“There still remained, for all men to share, the linked worlds of love and art. Linked, because love without art is merely the slaking of desire, and art cannot be enjoyed unless it is approached with love.”

“The rash assertion that 'God made man in His own image' is ticking like a time bomb at the foundation of many faiths, and as the hierarchy of the universe is disclosed to us, we may have to recognize this chilling truth: if there are any gods whose chief concern is man, they cannot be very important gods.”

“To obtain a mental picture of the distance to the nearest star, compared to the nearest planet, you must imagine a world in which the closest object to you is only five feet away — and there is nothing else to see until you have travelled a thousand miles.”

“If I may be allowed just three wishes, they would be these.
Firstly, I would like to see some evidence of extra-terrestrial life. I have always believed that we are not alone in the universe. But we are still waiting for ETs to call us — or give us some kind of a sign. We have no way of guessing when this might happen — I hope sooner rather than later!
Secondly, I would like to see us kick our current addiction to oil, and adopt clean energy sources. … Climate change has now added a new sense of urgency. Our civilisation depends on energy, but we can't allow oil and coal to slowly bake our planet…
The third wish is one closer to home. I’ve been living in Sri Lanka for 50 years — and half that time, I’ve been a sad witness to the bitter conflict that divides my adopted country.
I dearly wish to see lasting peace established in Sri Lanka as soon as possible.”

“What we need is a machine that will let us see the other guy’s point of view.”

“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.”

“Yet now, as he roared across the night sky toward an unknown destiny, he found himself facing that bleak and ultimate question which so few men can answer to their satisfaction. What have I done with my life, he asked himself, that the world will be poorer if I leave it.”

“Our age is in many ways unique, full of events and phenomena that never occurred before and can never happen again. They distort our thinking, making us believe that what is true now will be true forever, though perhaps on a larger scale. Because we have annihilated distance on this planet, we imagine that we can do it once again. The facts are otherwise, and we see them more clearly if we forget the present and turn our minds towards the past.”

“We have abolished space here on the little Earth; we can never abolish the space that yawns between the stars. Once again, as in the days when Homer sang, we are face-to-face with immensity and must accept its grandeur and terror, its inspiring possibilities and its dreadful restraints.”

“He had wished to convince himself that Comarre was evil. Now he knew that it was not. There would always be, even in Utopia, some for whom the world had nothing to offer but sorrow and disillusion.”

“News that is sufficiently bad somehow carries its own guarantee of truth. Only good reports need confirmation.”

“A single neutron begins the chain-reaction that in an instant can destroy a million lives and the toil of generations. Equally insignificant and unimportant are the trigger-events which can sometimes change a man’s course of action and so alter the whole pattern of his future.”