1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. 2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. 3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of pushing boundaries and recognizes that advanced technology can seem magical.
Arthur C. Clarke's quote reflects on the nature of scientific understanding and discovery. The first part suggests that respected scientists are likely accurate in their assessment of what is possible, but may misjudge what is impossible. The second part encourages exploration beyond current limits to uncover new possibilities, while the final statement highlights that as technology becomes more advanced, it can appear magical to those who do not understand it. Together, these thoughts inspire innovation and a willingness to challenge perceived limits in science and technology.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of scientific innovation.
Nowhere in space will we rest our eyes upon the familiar shapes of trees and plants, or any of the animals that share our world. Whatsoever life we meet will be as strange and alien as the nightmare creatures of the ocean abyss, or of the insect empire whose horrors are normally hidden from us by their microscopic scale.
As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying.
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.
It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.
My favorite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelligence'.
Species evolve exactly as if they were adapting as best they could to a changing world, and not at all as if they were moving toward a set goal.
Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.
The brightest flashes in the world of thought are incomplete until they have been proven to have their counterparts in the world of fact.
My practise as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel, or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world. And I should be a coward if I did not state my theoretical views in public.
Well, I'm a bacteriologist, you know. I live in a nine-hundred-diameter microscope. I can hardly claim to take serious notice of anything that I can see with my naked eye.
Geometry existed before the creation. It is co-eternal with the mind of God...Geometry provided God with a model for the Creation.
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