A Quote by Arthur C. Clarke

I sometimes think that the universe is a machine designed for the perpetual astonishment of astronomers.

Arthur C. Clarke

Quote Topics

Astonishment Astronomers Designed Machine Perpetual Sometimes Think Universe

Quote Author

Arthur C. Clarke
English - Writer
December 16, 1917 - March 19, 2008

The most unfathomable schools and sages have never attained to the gravity which dwells in the eyes of a baby of three months old. It is the gravity of astonishment at the universe, and astonishment at the universe is not mysticism, but a transcendent common-sense. The fascination of children lies in this: that with each of them all things are remade, and the universe is put again upon its trial.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

You know the definition of the perfectly designed machine.... The perfectly designed machine is one in which all its working parts wear out simultaneously. I am that machine.

Frederick Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell

Live in a perpetual great astonishment.

Theodore Roethke

Keep in mind that if you take a tour through a hospital and look at every machine with on and off switch that is brought into the service of diagnosing the human condition, that machine is based on principles of physics discovered by a physicist in a machine designed by an engineer.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

In brief, the whole world is the totality of mathematically expressible motions of objects in space and time, and the entire universe is a great, harmonious, and mathematically designed machine.

Morris Kline

I don't know about you, but I practice a disorganized religion. I belong to an unholy disorder. We call ourselves "Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment."

Kurt Vonnegut

I was always intrigued when I was growing up, and then in engineering school, with the idea of a perpetual machine. I think of the Wal-Mart culture as that.

Mike Duke

Every spring is the only spring, a perpetual astonishment.

Ellis Peters

Astronomers have been bewildered by the theory of an expanding universe, but there is no less expansion in the moral infinite of the universe of man. As far as the frontiers of science are pushed back, over the extended arc of these frontiers one will hear the poet's hounds on the chase.

Saint-John Perse

Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other.

C. S. Lewis

For how smart we think we are, how facile with words, we don't have a word for this feeling, the feeling of being blessed by belonging. If the universe is an unfolding bud, then I am a part of its creative surge, along with the flowing of water and the growing of pines. I can find a kind of camaraderie in this universe, once I recover from the astonishment of it. Or maybe not camaraderie exactly. What is the opposite of loneliness?

Kathleen Moore

I think you have to find how the machine can work for you. That's what I mean by "attaching yourself to the machine," 'cause the machine is going to be there, and you can rage against the machine, which is cool, but there's ways that you can benefit off the machine if you're savvy enough and you're sharp enough, smart enough. We all got to live and eat.

Ice Cube

I don't know what God is, or what God had in mind when the universe was set in motion. In fact, I don't know if God even exists, although I confess that I sometimes find myself praying in times of great fear, or despair, or astonishment at a display of unexpected beauty.

Jon Krakauer

For men, I think, love is a thing formed of equal parts lust and astonishment. The astonishment part women understand. The lust part they only think they understand.

Stephen King

Dilbert: I'm obsessed with inventing a perpetual motion machine. Most scientists think it's impossible, but I have something they don't. Dogbert: A lot of spare time? Dilbert: Exactly.