Thursday, May 19, 2005

Quotes of the Day #86



Arthur Clarke
If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run - and often in the short one - the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.

It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.

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.
(Clarke's first law)

The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.
(Clarke's second law)

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
(Clarke's third law)

A hundred years ago, the electric telegraph made possible - indeed, inevitable - the United States of America. The communications satellite will make equally inevitable a United Nations of Earth; let us hope that the transition period will not be equally bloody.

It may be that the old astrologers had the truth exactly reversed, when they believed that the stars controlled the destinies of men. The time may come when men control the destinies of stars.

The inspirational value of the space program is probably of far greater importance to education than any input of dollars... A whole generation is growing up which has been attracted to the hard disciplines of science and engineering by the romance of space.

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


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