Arthur C. Clarke

There were some things that only time could cure. Evil men could be destroyed but nothing could be done about good men who were deluded.

News that is sufficiently bad somehow carries its own guarantee of truth. Only good reports need confirmation.

People are always asking me why I've devoted my life to such a horrible period of history, and it's not much of answer to say that there were even worse ones.' 'Then why are you interested in my century?' 'Because it marks the transition between barbarism and civilization.'...

Their little universe is very young, and its god is still a child. But it is too soon to judge them; when We return in the Last Days, We will consider what should be saved. p. 88, Epilogue

Why should one be afraid of something merely because it is strange?

I suppose they can detect sound vibrations - most marine creatures can - though this atmosphere may be too thin to carry my voice very far... Hello, can you hear me? My name is Frank Pool... ahem... I come in peace for all mankind. Makes me feel rather stupid, but can you suggest anything better? And it will be good for the record... Nobody's taking the slightest notice. Big ones and little ones, they're all creeping towards their igloos. Wonder what they actually do when they get there p. 29

Yes - crime. Always some... Society's irreducible noise level. What to do? Your solution - prisons. State-sponsored perversion factories - costing ten times average family income to hold one inmate! Utterly crazy... Obviously something very wrong with people who shouted loudest for more prisons - They should be psychoanalysed! But let's be fair - really no alternative before electronic monitoring and control perfected - you should see the joyful crowds smashing the prison walls then - nothing like it since Berlin fifty years earlier! p. 39

“Very ingenious, like all your theories,” said Stormgren. “I wish you’d give them Opus numbers so that I could keep up with them. The objections to this one—”

Within a few days he was being measured for his wings, not in the least like the elegant versions worn by the performers of Swan Lake. Instead of feathers there was a flexible membrane, and when he grasped the hand-holds attached to the supporting ribs, Poole realized that he must look much more like a bat than a bird.... For his first lessons he was restrained by a light harness, so that he did not move anywhere while he was taught the basic strokes - and, most important of all, learned control and stability. Like many acquired skills, it was not quite as easy as it looked. p.27

I've just had an amusing flashback. All these creatures going in the same direction - they look like the commuters who used to surge back and forth twice a day between home and office, before electronics made it unnecessary. p.29

The extremists in his movement had discredited themselves thoroughly, and it would be a long time before the world heard of them again.

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