Arthur C. Clarke

But please remember: this is only a work of fiction. The truth, as always, will be far stranger.

There's no real objection to escapism, in the right places... We all want to escape occasionally. But science fiction is often very far from escapism, in fact you might say that science fiction is escape into reality... It's a fiction which does concern itself with real issues: the origin of man; our future. In fact I can't think of any form of literature which is more concerned with real issues, reality.

Excessive interest in pathological behavior was itself pathological

We stand now at the turning point between two eras. Behind us is a past to which we can never return...

I will not be afraid because I understand ... And understanding is happiness.

A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.

And because, in all the Galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the fields of stars; they sowed, and sometimes they reaped. And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed.

In my life I have found two things of priceless worth - learning and loving. Nothing else - not fame, not power, not achievement for its own sake - can possible have the same lasting value. For when your life is over, if you can say 'I have learned' and 'I have loved,' you will also be able to say 'I have been happy.

I am an optimist. Anyone interested in the future has to be otherwise he would simply shoot himself.

It is a good principle in science not to believe any 'fact'---however well attested---until it fits into some accepted frame of reference. Occasionally, of course, an observation can shatter the frame and force the construction of a new one, but that is extremely rare. Galileos and Einsteins seldom appear more than once per century, which is just as well for the equanimity of mankind.

What was more, they had taken the first step toward genuine friendship. They had exchanged vulnerabilities.

It must be wonderful to be seventeen, and to know everything.

Humor was the enemy of desire.

As his body became more and more defenseless, so his means of offense became steadily more frightful.

Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.