# The City And The Stars

- Author: [Arthur C. Clarke](https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-c-clarke.md)
- Quotes: 10
- Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-c-clarke/the-city-and-the-stars

## Quotes

> If the artist did not know his goal, even the most miraculous of tools could not find it for him.

p. 13 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-c-clarke/the-city-and-the-stars/if-the-artist.md)

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

> It is not my duty as an historian to predict the future, only to observe and interpret the past. But its lesson is clear enough; we have lived too long out of contact with reality, and now the time has come to rebuild our lives.

p. 183 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-c-clarke/the-city-and-the-stars/it-is-not.md)

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

> He had discharged his destiny; now, perhaps, he could begin to live.

p. 187 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-c-clarke/the-city-and-the-stars/he-had-discharged.md)

Topics: [life](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/life.md), [fate](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/fate.md)

> Khedron was content with the order of things as it was. True, he might upset that order from time to time—but only by a little. He was a critic, not a revolutionary. On the placidly flowing river of time, he wished only to make a few ripples; he shrank from diverting its course.

p. 44 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-c-clarke/the-city-and-the-stars/khedron-was-content.md)

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

> 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.

p. 37 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-c-clarke/the-city-and-the-stars/there-still-remained.md)

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

> There was only one thing of which he could be certain now. Boredom would not be a serious problem for a considerable time to come.

p. 77 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-c-clarke/the-city-and-the-stars/there-was-only.md)

> 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.

p. 174 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-c-clarke/the-city-and-the-stars/all-explorers-are.md)

> After a while Hilvar did his best to steer the conversation away from these meaningless morasses of theology in order to concentrate on the ascertainable facts.

p. 100 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-c-clarke/the-city-and-the-stars/after-a-while.md)

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

> The fact was that 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 the earlier part of its history, the human race had brought forth an endless succession of prophets, seers, messiahs, and evangelists who convinced themselves and their followers that to them alone were the secrets of the universe revealed. Some of them succeeded in establishing religions which survived for many generations and influenced billions of men; others were forgotten even before their deaths.
>
> 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, not 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.

p. 99 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-c-clarke/the-city-and-the-stars/the-fact-was.md)

Topics: [religion](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/religion.md), [science](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/science.md)

> Somewhere back at the beginning I was chosen to be Jester, and there is only one Jester at a time in Diaspar. Most people think that is one too many.

p. 33 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/arthur-c-clarke/the-city-and-the-stars/somewhere-back-at-the.md)