Arthur C. Clarke · 256 pages
Rating: (10.9K votes)
“Now I can rejoice that I knew you, rather than mourn because I lost you.”
“...if one had to think about every footstep one took, ordinary walking would be impossible.”
“Problems seldom go away if they’re ignored.”
“He felt like a young student again, confronted with all the art and knowledge of mankind. The experience was both exhilarating and depressing; a whole universe lay at his fingertips, but the fraction of it he could explore in an entire lifetime was so negligible that he was sometimes overwhelmed with despair.”
“Don’t believe anything I’ve told you—merely because I said it.”
“So the problem of Evil never really existed. To expect the universe to be benevolent was like imagining one could always win at a game of pure chance.”
“There’s an ancient philosophical joke that’s much subtler than it seems. Question: Why is the Universe here? Answer: Where else would it be?”
“The Lassans were insatiably inquisitive, and the concept of privacy was almost unknown to them. A Please Do Not Disturb sign was often regarded as a personal challenge, which led to interesting complications...”
“Here the trees surrounded them with an invisible, anechoic blanket, so that every word seemed sucked into silence the moment it was uttered.”
“He’s a creature of today—not haunted by the past or fearful of the future!”
“Death focuses the mind on the things that really matter: why are we here, and what should we do?”
“Sometimes a decision has to be made by a single individual, who has the authority to enforce it. That’s why you need a captain. You can’t run a ship by a committee—at least not all the time.”
“Soon after her beloved young brother was killed, she asked me, “What is the purpose of grief? Does it serve any biological function?”
“harsh verdict of the great philosopher Lucretius: all religions were fundamentally immoral, because the superstitions they peddled wrought more evil than good.”
“The sign of its passing was written there upon the sky as if a giant hand had drawn a piece of chalk across the blue dome of heaven. Even as they watched, the gleaming vapor trail began to fray at the edges, breaking up into wisps of cloud, until it seemed that a bridge of snow had been thrown from horizon to horizon.”
“This was the fundamental problem with rockets—and no one had ever discovered any alternative for deep-space propulsion. It was just as difficult to lose speed as to acquire it, and carrying the necessary propellant for deceleration did not merely double the difficulty of a mission; it squared it.”
“Ya sé, desde luego, que la Atlántida de Platón nunca existió en realidad. Por esta misma razón, nunca podrá morir. Siempre será un ideal, un sueño de perfección , una meta que inspirará a los hombres en la posteridad.”
“Apart from this common Lassan tendency to procrastinate, Kumar’s chief defects were an adventurous nature and a fondness for sometimes risky practical jokes. This,”
“What if they’re using videogames to train us to fight without us even knowing it? Like Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid, when he made Daniel-san paint his house, sand his deck, and wax all of his cars—he was training him and he didn’t even realize it! Wax on, wax off—but on a global scale!”
“Volatile, raw hunger. Promising. No... more than promising. Swearing. A brutal swearing of intentions. Oh, God yes.”
“Wayne…” Wax said. “You know she doesn’t actually like you.” “You always say that, but you’re just not seein’ the truth, Wax.” “She tries to kill you.” “To keep me alive,” Wayne said. “She knows I live a dangerous life. So, keepin’ me on my toes is the best way to make sure I stick around.”
“mom, i am lonely.
i think i learnt it when dad left;
how to turn the anger into lonely,
the lonely into busy.”
“If they had only known where they were trying to go, they could have improvised and found their own way without someone stepping in to point them in the right direction.”
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