Arthur C. Clarke · 256 pages
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“Now I can rejoice that I knew you, rather than mourn because I lost you.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The Songs Of Distant Earth
“...if one had to think about every footstep one took, ordinary walking would be impossible.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The Songs Of Distant Earth
“Problems seldom go away if they’re ignored.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The Songs Of Distant Earth
“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.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The Songs Of Distant Earth
“Don’t believe anything I’ve told you—merely because I said it.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The Songs Of Distant Earth
“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.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The Songs Of Distant Earth
“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?”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The Songs Of Distant Earth
“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...”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The Songs Of Distant Earth
“Here the trees surrounded them with an invisible, anechoic blanket, so that every word seemed sucked into silence the moment it was uttered.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The Songs Of Distant Earth
“He’s a creature of today—not haunted by the past or fearful of the future!”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The Songs Of Distant Earth
“Death focuses the mind on the things that really matter: why are we here, and what should we do?”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The Songs Of Distant Earth
“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.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The Songs Of Distant Earth
“Soon after her beloved young brother was killed, she asked me, “What is the purpose of grief? Does it serve any biological function?”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The Songs Of Distant Earth
“harsh verdict of the great philosopher Lucretius: all religions were fundamentally immoral, because the superstitions they peddled wrought more evil than good.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The Songs Of Distant Earth
“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.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The Songs Of Distant Earth
“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.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The Songs Of Distant Earth
“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.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The Songs Of Distant Earth
“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,”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from The Songs Of Distant Earth
Arthur C. Clarke
Born place: in Minehead, Somerset, England, The United Kingdom
Born date December 16, 1917
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“detto tibetano: «Se c’è venerazione, anche il dente d’un cane emette luce».”
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― Brittainy C. Cherry, quote from The Silent Waters
“Lying there, I thought of my own culture, of the assembly of books in the library at Alexandria; of the deliberations of Darwin and Mendel in their respective gardens; of the architectural conception of the cathedral at Chartres; of Bach's cello suites, the philosophy of Schweitzer, the insights of Planck and Dirac. Have we come all this way, I wondered, only to be dismantled by our own technologies, to be betrayed by political connivance or the impersonal avarice of a corporation?”
― Barry López, quote from Arctic Dreams
“Ireland, like Ukraine, is a largely rural country which suffers from its proximity to a more powerful industrialised neighbour. Ireland’s contribution to the history of tractors is the genius engineer Harry Ferguson, who was born in 1884, near Belfast.
Ferguson was a clever and mischievous man, who also had a passion for aviation. It is said that he was the first man in Great Britain to build and fly his own aircraft in 1909. But he soon came to believe that improving efficiency of food production would be his unique service to mankind. Harry Ferguson’s first two-furrow plough was attached to the chassis of the Ford Model T car converted into a tractor, aptly named Eros. This plough was mounted on the rear of the tractor, and through ingenious use of balance springs it could be raised or lowered by the driver using a lever beside his seat. Ford, meanwhile, was developing its own tractors. The Ferguson design was more advanced, and made use of hydraulic linkage, but Ferguson knew that despite his engineering genius, he could not achieve his dream on his own. He needed a larger company to produce his design. So he made an informal agreement with Henry Ford, sealed only by a handshake. This Ford-Ferguson partnership gave to the world a new type of Fordson tractor far superior to any that had been known before, and the precursor of all modern-type tractors. However, this agreement by a handshake collapsed in 1947 when Henry Ford II took over the empire of his father, and started to produce a new Ford 8N tractor, using the Ferguson system. Ferguson’s open and cheerful nature was no match for the ruthless mentality of the American businessman. The matter was decided in court in 1951. Ferguson claimed $240 million, but was awarded only $9.25 million. Undaunted in spirit, Ferguson had a new idea. He approached the Standard Motor Company at Coventry with a plan, to adapt the Vanguard car for use as tractor. But this design had to be modified, because petrol was still rationed in the post-war period. The biggest challenge for Ferguson was the move from petrol-driven to diesel-driven engines and his success gave rise to the famous TE-20, of which more than half a million were built in the UK. Ferguson will be remembered for bringing together two great engineering stories of our time, the tractor and the family car, agriculture and transport, both of which have contributed so richly to the well-being of mankind.”
― Marina Lewycka, quote from A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
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