Arthur C. Clarke citáty

strana 7

„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.“

“I am the King.”

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is equivalent to magic.”

“That’s what I think they’re doing, eating themselves alive. They murder in the name of God and blindly destroy the very ecosystem that sustains them.”

“What we find incredible is the way that people - right up to the early 2000s!”

“So many people did it that it was no longer an obsession; it was a demographic.”

“Of course, we in the so-called developed countries thought we were civilized.”

“Once you asked me about crime nowadays - I said any such interest pathological - maybe prompted by the endless sickening television programmes of your time - never able to watch more than few minutes myself... disgusting!”

“The search for alien artefacts in the Solar System should be a perfectly legitimate branch of science ('exoarchaeology'?). Unfortunately, it has been largely discredited by claims that such evidence has already been found - and has been deliberately suppressed by NASA!”

“Their little universe is very young, and its god is still a child. But it is too soon to judge them; when We return in the Last Days, We will consider what should be saved.”

“Whatever godlike powers and principalities lurked beyond the stars, Poole reminded himself, for ordinary humans only two things were important - Love and Death.”

“Although Poole sometimes missed the cops-and-robbers dramas he had often enjoyed in his youth, he had grown to accept the current wisdom: excessive interest in pathological behaviour was itself pathological.”

“Of course, we in the so-called developed countries thought we were civilized. At least war wasn't respectable any more, and the United Nations was always doing its best to stop the wars that did break out. Not very successfully: I'd give it about three out of ten...”

“All the religiosity around worries me—doesn’t it you?”

“Such craziness captured media attention, but was fortunately still rare.”

“Democracy is our most important possession. If we throw it away when the going gets tough, we might never get it back.”

“You know, we’re not used to secrecy up here. It’s not encouraged. We all have to work together to keep alive. Secrecy is corrosive, Professor, bad for morale.”

“Maybe it’s a mark of a maturing culture, do you think, that secrets aren’t kept, that truth is told, that things are talked out?”

“You do realize how many impossible things have to be true for that to have happened?”

“When the pious fools come up against the godless pagans who own Judea, the result is what might be called diplomatic incidents.”

“Slickness of presentation didn’t imply comprehensiveness of knowledge.”

“We have no idea what waits for us out there. We did not choose this situation, and whatever manner of creature or accident has stranded us here did not take much notice of our welfare. I would say nice moral questions are beside the point, and that pragmatism is the order of the day.”

“Years compress like fault lines in the mind. While everything else changes, the mind remembers exactly what it wants to remember. A decade can be lost and a year seem like forever.”

“Thinkers prepare the revolution; bandits carry it out.”

“Man's bodily functions moved only toward death, but the mind could continue to enrich itself even as everything else embraced entropy.”

“People don't know what's good for them; they only know what they want. I learned to keep my expectations low a long time ago. It's good advice for anyone.”

“We stand now at the turning point between two eras. Behind us is a past to which we can never return ... The coming of the rocket brought to an end a million years of isolation ... the childhood of our race was over and history as we know it began.”