Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
To find where limits end, you must try to go beyond them. Progress requires attempting what seems impossible first.
In plain terms
Test limits by trying impossible things.
What can you take from it?
Innovation requires attempting the impossible.

Where it applies

  • scientific research
  • business strategy

Putting it to work

  • encourage risky experiments
  • set bold goals

Questions to consider

  • What impossible thing is worth trying?

Another view

Some boundaries cannot be crossed safely.

More from Arthur C. Clarke

  1. Clarke's First Law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something i…

    Permalink to quote #42
  2. Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

    Permalink to quote #44
  3. 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 a…

    Permalink to quote #41

Related quotes

  1. By striving to do the impossible, man has always achieved what is possible. Those who have cautiously done no more than they believed possible have never taken…

    Mikhail BakuninMikhail Bakunin quote #7
  2. The cruelties and obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. It cannot be moved by those who cling to a p…

    Robert KennedyRobert Kennedy quote #21
  3. The cruelties and obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. It cannot be moved by those who cling to a p…

    Robert F. KennedyRobert F. Kennedy quote #21