# Quote — Arthur C. Clarke, 3001 The Final Odyssey

> What we find incredible is the way that people - right up to the early 2000s! - calmly accepted behaviour we would consider atrocious. And believed in the most mindboggled... Nonsense, which surely any rational person would dismiss out of hand.'...
>
> 'Examples, please.' 'Well... every year in some countries thousands of little girls were hideously mutilated to preserve their virginity? Many of them died - but the authorities turned a blind eye.' 'I agree that was terrible - but what could my government do about it?' 'A great deal - if it wished. But that would have offended the people who supplied it with oil and bought its weapons, like the landmines that killed and maimed civilians by the thousand.' p.32

- Author: [Arthur C. Clarke](https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-c-clarke.md)
- Book: [3001 The Final Odyssey](https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-c-clarke/3001-the-final-odyssey.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke#3001:_The_Final_Odyssey_(1997)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Topics: [politics](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/politics.md), [morality](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/morality.md)
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-c-clarke/3001-the-final-odyssey/what-we-find

## More from this book

> Above all, there was the memory - and mystery - of Helena... It had begun as a casual affair, in the early days of his astrotraining, but had become more and more serious as the years went by. Just before he had left for Jupiter, they had planned to make it permanent when he returned. And if he did not, Helena wished to have his child. He still recalled the blend of solemnity and hilarity with which they had made the necessary arrangements...

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-c-clarke/3001-the-final-odyssey/above-all-there.md)

Topics: [love](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/love.md)

> Then, one day, an unusually tasty dish appeared, which brought back vivid memories of the deer - hunts and barbecues of his youth. However, there was something unfamiliar about both flavour and texture, so Poole asked the obvious question. Anderson merely smiled, but for a few seconds Indra looked as if she was about to be sick. Then she recovered and said: 'You tell him - after we've finished eating.'... 'Corpse-food was on the way out even in your time,' Anderson explained. 'Raising animals to - ugh -eat them became economically impossible. I don't know how many acres of land it took to feed one cow, but at least ten humans could survive on the plants... And probably a hundred, with hydroponic techniques. 'But what finished the whole horrible business was not economics - but disease. It started first with cattle, then spread to other food animals - a kind of virus, I believe, that affected the brain, and caused a particularly nasty death.... Synthetic foods were now far cheaper, and you could get them in any flavour you liked. p.32 -33

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-c-clarke/3001-the-final-odyssey/then-one-day.md)

Topics: [animals](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/animals.md)

> 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'You're Commander Poole, of course. But I'm sure we've never met before.'...He was glad of the encounter, and was pleased to know that Danil was back in normal society. Whether his original crime had been axe-murders or overdue library books should no longer be the concern of his one-time employer; the account had been settled, the books closed. p. 73

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-c-clarke/3001-the-final-odyssey/im-sorry-he-said.md)