Arthur C. Clarke Quotes

Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature.

The real truth that dare not speak itself, is that no one is in control, absolutely no one... Nobody is in control. This stuff is ruled by the equations of dynamics and chaos. Now, there may be entities seeking control - the World Bank, the Communist Party, the rich, the somebody-or-others - but to seek control is to take enormous aggravation upon yourself... It's like trying to control a dream.

Life cannot be calculated. That's the big mistake our civilization made. We never accepted that randomness is not a mistake in the equation -- it is part of the equation.

You can't predict anything. How can you be certain about anything when everything is chaos and we're not in control?

Everything is contingent, and there is also chaos.

Most of nature is inherently chaotic. It's not rigidly determined in the old sense. It's not rigidly predictable.

What we imagine is order is merely the prevailing form of chaos.

Zippy accepts chaos as what it is, which is the real order of everything.

Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.

It is always the unreadable that occurs.

There is no order in the world around us, we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead

History is totally unpredictable.

Destiny and history are untidy.

History is much more the product of chaos than of conspiracy.

'Entropy' broadly means tending towards chaos constantly.

What interests me is the unforeseeable.

One might as well attempt to calculate mathematically the contingent forms of the tinkling bits of glass in a kaleidoscope as to look through the tube of the future and foretell its pattern.

She sees things — things that might happen, things that are coming. But it’s very subjective. The future isn’t set in stone. Things change.

A little-known truth: Every aspect of the world is fundamentally unpredictable. Computer scientists have long since proved this.

They believed that prediction was just a function of keeping track of things. If you knew enough, you could predict anything. That's been cherished scientific belief since Newton.' And?' Chaos theory throws it right out the window.

What I have figured out is that I can predict the future. I just can't predict when.

This tremendous friction which cannot, as in mechanics, be reduced to a few points, is everywhere in contact with chance, and brings about effects that cannot be measured just because they are largely due to chance.

Life is merely a fracas on an unmapped terrain, and the universe a geometry stricken with epilepsy.

World is crazier and more of it than we think, Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion A tangerine and spit the pips and feel The drunkenness of things being various.

Life doesn't have plots and subplots and denouements. It's just a big collection of loose ends and dangling threads that never get explained.