Quotes from The City and the Stars

“If we both believe that we have nothing to learn from the other, is it not obvious that we will both be wrong?”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars

“Long ago it had been discovered that without some crime or disorder, Utopia soon became unbearably dull.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars

“And there still remained, for all men to share, the linked worlds of Love and Art. Linked, because love without art is merely the slaking of desire, and Art cannot be enjoyed unless it is approached with Love.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars

“When beauty is universal, it loses its power to move the heart, and only its absence can produce any emotional effect.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars

“The rise of science, which with monotonous regularity refuted the cosmologies of the prophets and produced miracles which they could never match, eventually destroyed all these faiths. It did not destroy the awe, nor the reverence and humility, which all intelligent beings felt as they contemplated the stupendous universe in which they found themselves. What it did weaken, and finally obliterate, were the countless religions each of which claimed with unbelievable arrogance, that it was the sole repository of the truth and that its millions of rivals and predecessors were all mistaken.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars

“Men had sought beauty in many forms—in sequences of sound, in lines upon paper, in surfaces of stone, in the movements of the human body, in colours ranged through space.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars

“Faith in one’s own destiny was among the most valuable of the gifts which the gods could bestow upon a man,”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars

“He did not wander aimlessly, though he never knew which village would be his next port of call. He was seeking no particular place, but a mood, an influence—indeed, a way of life.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars

“However much the universe and its mysteries might call him, this was where he was born and where he belonged. It would never satisfy him, yet always he would return. He had gone half-way across the Galaxy to learn this simple truth.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars

“Men had sought beauty in many forms—in sequences of sound, in lines upon paper, in surfaces of stone, in the movements of the human body, in colours ranged through space. All these media still survived in Diaspar and down the ages others had been added to them. No one was yet certain if all the possibilities of art had been discovered, or if it had any meaning outside the mind of Man. And the same was true of love.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars

“Alvin was an explorer, and all explorers are seeking something they have lost. It is seldom that they find it, and more seldom still that the attainment brings them greater happiness than the quest.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars

“They had forgotten much, but they did not know it. They were as perfectly fitted to their environment as it was to them—for both had been designed together. What was beyond the walls of the city was no concern of theirs; it was something that had been shut out of their minds. Diaspar was all that existed, all that they needed, all that they could imagine. It mattered nothing to them that Man had once possessed the stars.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars

“In Lys, it seemed, all love began with mental contact, and it might be months or years before a couple actually met. In this way, Hilvar explained, there could be no false impressions, no deceptions, on either side. Two people whose minds were open to one another could hide no secrets.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars

“When beauty is universal, it loses its power to move the heart,”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars

“No single individual, however eccentric or brilliant, could affect the enormous inertia of a society that had remained virtually unchanged for over a billion years.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars

“Like every human being, Alvin was in some measure a machine, his actions predetermined by his inheritance. That did not alter his need for understanding and sympathy, nor did it render him immune to loneliness or frustration. To his own people, he was so unaccountable a creature that they sometimes forgot that he still shared their emotions.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars

“It was idle to speculate, to build pyramids of surmise on a foundation of ignorance.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars

“Otsusta minu üle mu tegude järgi, ehkki neid on vähe, mitte mu sõnade järgi, kuigi neid on palju.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars

“Behind Alystra was the known world, full of wonder yet empty of surprise, drifting like a brilliant but tightly closed bubble down the river of time. Ahead, separated from her by no more than the span of a few footsteps, was the empty wilderness—the world of the desert—the world of the Invaders.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars

“Long ago the signalling had become no more than a meaningless ritual, now maintained by an animal which had forgotten to learn and a robot which had never known to forget.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars

“Oh, I can think of many reasons. Perhaps it’s a signal, so that any strange ship entering our universe will know where to look for life. Perhaps it marks the centre of galactic administration. Or perhaps—and somehow I feel that this is the real explanation—it’s simply the greatest of all works of art. But it’s foolish to speculate now. In a few hours we shall know the truth.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars

“That suggested two possibilities. It was either too unintelligent to understand him—or it was very intelligent indeed, with its own powers of choice and volition. In that case, he must treat it as an equal. Even then he might underestimate it—but it would bear him no resentment, for conceit was not a vice from which robots often suffered.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars

“On the placidly flowing river of time, he wished only to make a few ripples: he shrank from diverting its course.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars

“The history of the Universe must be a mass of such disconnected threads, and no one could say which were important and which were trivial.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars

“Linked, because love without art is merely the slaking of desire, and Art cannot be enjoyed unless it is approached with Love. Men”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars

“You are rather too fond of talking in riddles,’ complained Jeserac.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars

“he suffered from an incurable malady which, it seemed, attacked only homo sapiens among all the intelligent races of the universe. That disease was religious mania. Throughout”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars

“And as for the Council—tell it that a road that has once been opened cannot be closed again merely by passing a resolution.’ The”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars

“A thousand years in one body is long enough for any man; at the end of that time, his mind is clogged with memories, and he asks only for rest—or a new beginning.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars

“Evolution and science had come to the same answers; and the work of Nature had lasted longer. At”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The City and the Stars

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Popular quotes

“When I was One,
I had just begun.
When I was Two,
I was nearly new.
When I was Three
I was hardly me.
When I was Four,
I was not much more.
When I was Five, I was just alive.
But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever,
So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.”
― A.A. Milne, quote from Now We Are Six

“Now, for example, people with freckles aren’t thought of as a minority by the nonfreckled. They aren’t a minority in the sense we’re talking about. And why aren’t they? Because a minority is only thought of as a minority when it constitutes some kind of a threat to the majority, real or imaginary. And no threat is ever quite imaginary. Anyone here disagree with that? If you do, just ask yourself, What would this particular minority do if it suddenly became the majority overnight? You see what I mean? Well, if you don’t – think it over!
“All right. Now along come the liberals – including everybody in this room, I trust – and they say, ‘Minorities are just people, like us.’ Sure, minorities are people – people, not angels. Sure, they’re like us – but not exactly like us; that’s the all-too- familiar state of liberal hysteria in which you begin to kid yourself you honestly cannot see any difference between a Negro and a Swede….” (Why, oh why daren’t George say “between Estelle Oxford and Buddy Sorensen”? Maybe, if he did dare, there would be a great atomic blast of laughter, and everybody would embrace, and the kingdom of heaven would begin, right here in classroom. But then again, maybe it wouldn’t.)
“So, let’s face it, minorities are people who probably look and act and – think differently from us and hay faults we don’t have. We may dislike the way they look and act, and we may hate their faults. And it’s better if we admit to disliking and hating them than if we try to smear our feelings over with pseudo liberal sentimentality. If we’re frank about our feelings, we have a safety valve; and if we have a safety valve, we’re actually less likely to start persecuting. I know that theory is unfashionable nowadays. We all keep trying to believe that if we ignore something long enough it’ll just vanish….
“Where was I? Oh yes. Well, now, suppose this minority does get persecuted, never mind why – political, economic, psychological reasons. There always is a reason, no matter how wrong it is – that’s my point. And, of course, persecution itself is always wrong; I’m sure we all agree there. But the worst of it is, we now run into another liberal heresy. Because the persecuting majority is vile, says the liberal, therefore the persecuted minority must be stainlessly pure. Can’t you see what nonsense that is? What’s to prevent the bad from being persecuted by the worse? Did all the Christian victims in the arena have to be saints?
“And I’ll tell you something else. A minority has its own kind of aggression. It absolutely dares the majority to attack it. It hates the majority–not without a cause, I grant you. It even hates the other minorities, because all minorities are in competition: each one proclaims that its sufferings are the worst and its wrongs are the blackest. And the more they all hate, and the more they’re all persecuted, the nastier they become! Do you think it makes people nasty to be loved? You know it doesn’t! Then why should it make them nice to be loathed? While you’re being persecuted, you hate what’s happening to You, you hate the people who are making it happen; you’re in a world of hate. Why, you wouldn’t recognize love if you met it! You’d suspect love! You’d think there was something behind it – some motive – some trick…”
― Christopher Isherwood, quote from A Single Man

“Sighing my sadness into him, I gently kiss his lips. I will remember this moment for eternity.”
― Sarah Ann Walker, quote from I Am Her...

“I'm against solutions that are worse than the problem. Like old women who want their hair dyed the color of shoe polish to hide the gray.”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from UnSouled

“He’s such a social guy—and so popular around here—that sometimes I wonder where he got it from. In many ways he’s the exact opposite of me. He likes to let a lot of people in; I like to keep most people out.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Fracture Me

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