Kenneth Clark Quotes

What I love about sci-fi is that every generation's films are based on what we know at that point in time. We make movies about the future, but it's always based on what we have. Then, as science grows and we discover new things, so do our ideas.

Remember, science fiction's always been the kind of first level alert to think about things to come. It's easier for an audience to take warnings from sci-fi without feeling that we're preaching to them. Every science fiction movie I have ever seen, any one that's worth its weight in celluloid, warns us about things that ultimately come true.

Science fiction is a unique literature. Science fiction is the first literature that says, 'Tomorrow is going to be different than yesterday, it's going to be a lot different.'

Teaching is, after all, a form of show business.

Bullshit is unavoidable when circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Thus, the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person's obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic exceed his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic. This discrepancy is common in public life, where people are frequently impelled-whether by their own propensities or by the demands of others - to speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant.

Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.

We have to reinvest, I think, in the idea of articulacy as a form of personal human freedom and power.

Science fiction [is] the kind of writing that prepares us for the necessary mutations brought about in society from an ever changing technological world and as a result. The mainstream hasn’t excluded SF; the mainstream has excluded itself. No one told Jules Verne he was a science fiction writer, but he invented the 20th century.

He was one of the few political leaders I have ever met whose public speeches revealed more than his private conversations. [On Ronald Reagan]

Good writing is the hardest form of thinking.

Over the weekend, of course, down there in Washington, D.C., they had the big White House Correspondents' Dinner. Do you know who was really funny? President Obama. So funny, in fact, he has already been promised 'The Tonight Show' in five years.

The first time that I appeared on stage, it scared me to death. I really didn't know what all the yelling was about. I didn't realize that my body was moving. It's a natural thing to me. So to the manager backstage I said, "What'd I do? What'd I do?" And he said, "Whatever it is, go back and do it again."

We may suppose that everyone has in himself the whole form of a moral conception.

My first debate in high school--"Resolved: Girls are no good"--and I won!

I was terrified of being on television - and also I overcompensated, I'm sure, because I know I did this in my personal life too at the time, when I was younger.

Whatever it is you're seeking won't come in the form you're expecting.

I've always felt that I shouldn't scream on the air...I just feel there's a way of rising enthusiastically if there's an exciting play, but you don't have to scream. There are people who do shout, and I think that's unnecessary. You have to be under control at all times, no matter what's taking place. Enthusiasm and excitement can be expressed without going berserk.

Those dabs of paint and lines become art when form and flow are created out of lower-level perceptual elements. When they combine harmoniously they give rise to perspective, foreground and background, and ultimately to emotion and other aesthetic attributes.

If I went back to college again, I'd concentrate on learning to write and to speak before an audience . Nothing is more important than the abillity to communicate effectively.

The Argument from Intimidation is a confession of intellectual impotence.

It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required.

A decade after an average athlete graduates, everyone will have forgotten when and where he played. But every time he speaks, everyone will know whether he was educated.

One of the first lessons a president has to learn is that every word he says weighs a ton.

To sway an audience, you must watch them as you speak.

Zen is consciousness unstructured by particular form or particular system, a trans-cultural, trans-religious, transformed consciousness.