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"Anything that had happened once on Earth should be expected millions of times elsewhere in the Universe, that was almost an article of faith among scientists."
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"Stars are fires that burn for thousands of years. Some of them burn slow and long, like red dwarfs. Others-blue giants-burn their fuel so fast they shine across great distances, and are easy to see. As they start to run out of fuel, they burn helium, grow even hotter, and explode in a supernova. Supernovas, they're brighter than the brightest galaxies. They die, but everyone watches them go."

"Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?""Yes.""All like ours?""I don't know, but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound - a few blighted.""Which do we live on - a splendid one or a blighted one?""A blighted one."

"Until very recently, the heavenly bodies have been investigated only with reference to their position and their laws of motion, and a quarter of a century ago astronomy was little more than celestial topography."

"My amateur interest in astronomy brought out the term 'magnitude,' which is used for the brightness of a star."

"But when researchers at Bell Labs discovered that static tends to come from particular places in the sky, the whole field of radio astronomy opened up."

"We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy."
Explore more quotes by Arthur C. Clarke

"I have a fantasy where Ted Turner is elected President but refuses because he doesn't want to give up power."

"The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion."

"We have to abandon the idea that schooling is something restricted to youth. How can it be, in a world where half the things a man knows at 20 are no longer true at 40 - and half the things he knows at 40 hadn't been discovered when he was 20?"

"Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering."

"Sometimes, during the lonely hours on the control deck, Bowman would listen to this radiation. He would turn up the gain until the room filled with a crackling, hissing roar; out of this background, at irregular intervals, emerged brief whistles and peeps like the cries of demented birds. It was an eerie sound, for it had nothing to do with Man; it was as lonely and meaningless as the murmur of waves on a beach, or the distant crash of thunder beyond the horizon."

"As his body became more and more defenseless, so his means of offense became steadily more frightful."
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