2001: A Space Odyssey Quotes
2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke. It was developed concurrently with Stanley Kubrick's film version and published after the release of the film. While Clarke and Kubrick worked on the book together, Clarke was the official author and dedicated the novel to Kubrick. The story is based in part on various short stories by Clarke, including "The Sentinel" (written in 1948 for a BBC competition, but first published in 1951 under the title "Sentinel of Eternity").
Notable Passages
“Discovery was no longer a happy ship.”
“After three million years of darkness, TMA-1 had greeted the lunar dawn.”
“The leopard knew that something was wrong when it felt a stunning blow on its head.”
“He was back, precisely where he wished to be, in the space that men called real.”
“But please remember this is only a work of fiction. The truth, as always, will be far stranger.”
“Presently he invented philosophy, and religion. And he peopled the sky, not altogether inaccurately, with gods.”
“In the caves, between spells of fitful dozing and fearful waiting, were being born the nightmares of generations yet to be.”
“Moon-Watcher started to move toward the nearest pig. It was a young and foolish animal, even by the undemanding standards of warthog intelligence.”
“Moon-Watcher had no idea of its cause, still less of its cure; but discontent had come into his soul, and he had taken one small step toward humanity.”
“And then there came a sound which Moon-Watcher could not possibly have identified, for it had never been heard before in the history of the world. It was the clank of metal upon stone.”
“For a few seconds Moon-Watcher stood uncertainly above his new victim…he was master of the world, and he was not quite sure what to do next.
But he would think of something.”
“"At the moment, we do not know whether to hope or fear. We do not know if, out on the moons of Saturn, you will meet with good or with evil — or only with ruins a thousand times older than Troy.””
“In a million years, the human race had lost few of its aggressive instincts; along symbolic lines visible only to politicians, the thirty-eight nuclear powers watched one another with belligerent anxiety.”
“For three million years, it had circled Saturn, waiting for a moment of destiny that might never come. In its making, a moon had been shattered, and the debris of its creation orbited still. Now the long wait was ending.”
“"I met Moisevitch at the Space Station…he'd heard of TMA-1; rumors are beginning to leak out. But we just can't issue any statement, until we know what the damn thing is and whether our Chinese friends are behind it.””
“"At first we thought it might be an outcrop of magnetic rock," Dr. Michaels said, "but all the geological evidence was against it. And not even a big nickel-iron meteorite could produce a field as intense as this; so we decided to have a look."”
“Outside the tropics, the glaciers slew those who had prematurely left their ancestral home. But, unlike so many others, the man-apes had not merely become extinct - they had been transformed.
The toolmakers had been remade by their own tools.”
“In their ceaseless experimenting, they had learned to store knowledge in the structure of space itself, and to preserve their thoughts for eternity in frozen lattices of light. They could become creatures of radiation, free at last from the tyranny of matter.”
“...there was already something in his gaze beyond the capability of any ape. In those dark, deep-set eyes was a dawning awareness- the first imitations of an intelligence that could not possibly fulfill itself for ages yet, and might soon be extinguished forever.”
“They had learned to speak, and so had won their first great victory over Time. Now the knowledge of one generation could be handed on to the next. Unlike the animals, who knew only the present, Man had acquired a past; and he was beginning to grope toward a future.”