Arthur C. Clarke Quotes

No healthy man, in his secret heart, is content with his destiny. He is tortured by dreams and images as a child is tortured by the thought of a state of existence in which it would live in a candy store and have two stomachs.

Some people are by nature slaves and will always be so.

Those who are believed to be most abject and humble are usually most ambitious and envious.

And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.

The privileged man, whether he be privileged politically or economically, is a man depraved in intellect and heart.

Democratic institutions are based on a reality of human nature: that those with power, however benign or even noble their intentions, will do what they can to keep it.

I used to look down on the world for being corrupt, but now I adore it for the utter magnificence of that corruption.

The Left has always sought single, non-values-based explanations for human behavior.

Scratch a pessimist, and you often find a defender of privilege.

It's them that take advantage that get advantage in this world.

Men will sooner surrender their rights than their customs.

There is a kind of theme that runs through the modern world that human relationships should be looked at in terms of power relationships, in terms of the manipulation of power. That is one of the really wicked ways of looking at the world. It strips people of their humanness.

That is the key to history. Terrific energy is expended ... civilizations are built up ... excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top, and then it all slides back into misery and ruin.

For thousands of years, the natural tendency of elites everywhere has been to monopolize power rather than restrain it.

The cause of mutual fear consists partly in the natural equality of men

Were it not for the corruption and viciousness of degenerate men, there would be no ... necessity that men should separate from this great and natural community, and by positive agreements combine into smaller and divided associations.

Men of today seem to feel more acutely than ever the paradox of their condition. They know themselves to be the supreme end to which all action should be subordinated, but the exigencies of action force them to treat one another as instruments or obstacles, as means. The more widespread their mastery of the world, the more they find themselves crushed by uncontrollable forces.

However energetically society in general may strive to make all the citizens equal and alike, the personal pride of each individual will always make him try to escape from the common level, and he will form some inequality somewhere to his own profit.

The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must

I've been around the ruling class all my life, and I've been quite aware of their total contempt for the people of the country

Women to govern men, slaves freemen, are much in the same degree; all being total violations and perversions of the laws of nature and nations.

Virginians and all who belong to slaveholding communities seem an exceptional, abnormal race, unlike anything else in Christendom.

Nothing can be more unfounded and false than the opinion that all men are born free and equal; inequality is indispensable to progress; government is not the result of compact, nor is it safe to entrust the suffrage to all.

We are domesticated animals, revolving in a cage which we have built for ourselves - with its contentions, wranglings, its impossible political leaders, its gurus who exploit our self-conceit and their own with great refinement or rather crudely.

The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.