11 Arthur C. Clarke Quotes on Life

Arthur C. Clarke quotes on life

8. Yet now, as he roared across the night sky toward and 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.

11. Behind every man now alive stand 30 ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.

17. I wanted to kill myself. I would have done it, too, if I had owned a gun. I was considering the gruesome alternatives - pills, slitting my wrists with a razor blade, jumping off a bridge - when another student called to ask me a detailed question on relativity. There was no way, after fifteen minutes of thinking about Mr. Einstein, that suicide was still a viable option. Divorce, certainly. Celibacy, highly likely. But death was out of the question. I could never have prematurely terminated my love affair with physics.

21. 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.

25. It is later than you think. May it not be true for this Sundial.

26. I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It's just been too intelligent to come here.

29. Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.

34. I've been saying for a long time that I'm hoping to find intelligent life in Washington ... I'm reasonably sure there must be life in this solar system, on Mars or on Europa, and other places. I think life is probably going to be ubiquitous, though we still don't have any proof of that yet - and still less, any proof of intelligent life anywhere. But I hope that will be coming in the next decade or so through radio astronomy or, perhaps, the discovery of objects in space which are obviously artificial. Astronomical engineering - that may be the other thing to look for.

37. There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.

38. The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.

67. One of the English science-fiction writers once said, 'Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.' ... I must say I agree with him.