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.
Interpretation
Science without strong moral principles leads to destruction.
Arthur C. Clarke emphasizes the interdependence of science and ethics, arguing that advancements in scientific knowledge must be coupled with a solid moral framework. When a society separates its scientific pursuits from ethical considerations, the results can be detrimental and ultimately self-sabotaging, leading both progress and morality to decline.
In practice
In a discussion about the responsibilities of scientists at a conference.
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.
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'.
Never attribute to malevolence what is merely due to incompetence
If we think of our chromosomes - they carry our genetic material - as being like shoelaces, I work on the plastic tips at the end that protect them.
Facts are not science - as the dictionary is not literature.
If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
It's inevitable that we'll have some form of designer children, fueled not just by the science but by parents' hard-wired desire to give their children every advantage.
I was an embarrassment to the department when they did research assessment exercises. A message would go round the department: 'Please give a list of your recent publications.' And I would send back a statement: 'None.'
Everyone in the astronaut program has a degree in a science field. The crew are the ones who do the experiments, help to design some of the experiments that come from other primary researchers. So it becomes very important that you have a science background.
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