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'.
Ageing is so many different things, and cells being able to self-renew is part of the picture but not all of it.
Nothing great in science has ever been done by men, whatever their powers, in whom the divine afflatus of the truth-seeker was wanting.
If we want to travel into the future, we just need to go fast. Really fast. And I think the only way we're ever likely to do that is by going into space.
One can say, looking at the papers in this symposium, that the elucidation of the genetic code is indeed a great achievement. It is, in a sense, the key to molecular biology because it shows how the great polymer languages, the nucleic acid language and the protein language, are linked together.
I have a reverence for medicine because I hero-worshiped my father [a former doctor], and because I admire doctors, I admire study, empiricism and rational thought. I don't study, empiricize or think rationally myself - but I admire it in others.
It science involves an intelligent and persistent endeavor to revise current beliefs so as to weed out what is erroneous, to add to their accuracy, and, above all, to give them such shape that the dependencies of the various facts upon one another may be as obvious as possible.
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