# Is this an Arthur C. Clarke quote? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 16, 2014, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-an-arthur-c-clarke-quote/681461 "2014-02-16T04:05:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2014, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-an-arthur-c-clarke-quote/681461/1 "2014-02-16T04:05:09Z")
While looking through a website mentioned in another thread, I saw this quote attributed to Arthur C. Clarke: “It is always wise to cooperate with the inevitable. Better still, to exploit it!”. Not only can I not find a reference to him saying it, I can’t find a reference to _anybody_ saying it. Help? ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Nader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Darth\_Nader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Nader)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2014, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-an-arthur-c-clarke-quote/681461/2 "2014-02-16T04:45:21Z")
Sounds a lot more like something from Heinlein’s Friday. ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2014, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-an-arthur-c-clarke-quote/681461/3 "2014-02-16T04:57:33Z")
Found this: [Mr. Carnegie’s advice for successful living might be summed up in two of his maxims: “Forget yourself; do things for others,” and “Cooperate with the inevitable.”](https://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/1124.html) Maybe he took it from someone else or someone else took it from him. ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2014, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-an-arthur-c-clarke-quote/681461/4 "2014-02-16T04:59:13Z")
And: [In the eighty or ninety years I have given to this subject, trying to trace out the meanderings of their twisty little minds, the only thing that I have learned for certain about women is that when a gal is gonna, she’s gonna. All a man can do is cooperate with the inevitable. ROBERT A. HEINLEIN, Stranger in a Strange Land]([Robert A. Heinlein Quotes](http://www.notable-quotes.com/h/heinlein_robert_a.html)) ---
**Author:** ![nphoenix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/6de8d8/32.png) [@nphoenix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nphoenix)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2014, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-an-arthur-c-clarke-quote/681461/5 "2014-02-16T05:52:10Z")
It may well have been from a personal letter, as the site you mention belongs to Wendy Carlos, who corresponded with Arthur C. Clarke for twenty years. However, Clarke said this on the record at the first IFS seminar in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 1982, as cited in Ben Bova’s “Star Peace”: > **[Star Peace](https://books.google.com/books?id=S1K8i9SzAxkC&pg=PT273&lpg=PT273&dq=%22wise%2Bto%2Bcooperate%2Bwith%2Bthe%2Binevitable%22&source=bl&ots=qZzooztSr2&sig=2YaGUSD1If7PHw0TBJIUhZF1yhg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=IVIAU-viJMSyyAGF2oD4Ag&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22wise%20to%20cooperate%20with%20the%20inevitable%22&f=false)** > > Star Peace (originally published in 1986) is a look at space warfare defense technology by novelist Ben Bova, the author of more than a hundred works of science fiction and fact.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital... ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2014, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-an-arthur-c-clarke-quote/681461/6 "2014-02-16T06:25:31Z")
> [@nphoenix](#): > > It may well have been from a personal letter, as the site you mention belongs to Wendy Carlos, who corresponded with Arthur C. Clarke for twenty years. > > However, Clarke said this on the record at the first IFS seminar in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 1982, as cited in Ben Bova’s “Star Peace”: > > [Star Peace: Assured Survival - Putting the "Star Wars" Defense in Perspective - Ben Bova - Google Books](http://books.google.com/books?id=S1K8i9SzAxkC&pg=PT273&lpg=PT273&dq=%22wise+to+cooperate+with+the+inevitable%22&source=bl&ots=qZzooztSr2&sig=2YaGUSD1If7PHw0TBJIUhZF1yhg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=IVIAU-viJMSyyAGF2oD4Ag&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22wise%20to%20cooperate%20with%20the%20inevitable%22&f=false) Thank you for the info, and the link. ---
**Author:** ![nphoenix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/6de8d8/32.png) [@nphoenix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nphoenix)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2014, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-an-arthur-c-clarke-quote/681461/7 "2014-02-16T06:42:37Z")
You’re quite welcome. The admonition to “cooperate with the inevitable” was popularized by Dale Carnegie, published in How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, 1948, but certainly used in his lectures long before that date, as it appears verbatim in a sermon summary in the Reading Eagle as early as 1942: [http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1955&dat=19420105&id=yY0hAAAAIBAJ&sjid=T5gFAAAAIBAJ&pg=3409,2113415](http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1955&dat=19420105&id=yY0hAAAAIBAJ&sjid=T5gFAAAAIBAJ&pg=3409,2113415) It becomes a common phrase for a while after that, showing up in several religious advertisements as well as in “Goren on Bridge”, of all places, on April 4, 1951, attributed to one “Old Mose”: [http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=888&dat=19510404&id=-ltIAAAAIBAJ&sjid=X04DAAAAIBAJ&pg=3120,1792633](http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=888&dat=19510404&id=-ltIAAAAIBAJ&sjid=X04DAAAAIBAJ&pg=3120,1792633) So Clarke was riffing on a phrase that would have been common knowledge to many of his contemporaries. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2014, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-an-arthur-c-clarke-quote/681461/8 "2014-02-16T15:04:17Z")
Posted in error ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2014, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-an-arthur-c-clarke-quote/681461/9 "2014-02-16T18:28:46Z")
While we’re on the subject, how about “The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system.”? Is that an Arthur C. Clarke quote? Every reference I can find on the Internet traces to Tim Kreider (almost all to his 2012 New York Times essay, but also [this](http://www.thepaincomics.com/weekly070307a.htm) from 2007). Can anyone find the source in Arthur C. Clarke? ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2014, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-an-arthur-c-clarke-quote/681461/10 "2014-02-16T19:51:31Z")
Interesting how multiple people said the same (or similar) thing around the same general time period. ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2014, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-an-arthur-c-clarke-quote/681461/11 "2014-02-16T20:17:40Z")
> [@Indistinguishable](#): > > While we’re on the subject, how about “The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system.”? Is that an Arthur C. Clarke quote? > > Every reference I can find on the Internet traces to Tim Kreider (almost all to his 2012 New York Times essay, but also [this](http://www.thepaincomics.com/weekly070307a.htm) from 2007). Can anyone find the source in Arthur C. Clarke? (I should clarify, for those who have not clicked through the links, that Tim Kreider claims it to be an Arthur C. Clarke quote, which is what spurs my curiosity) [I should also actually provide the link to the [2012 New York Times essay](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/the-busy-trap/)…] ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2014, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-an-arthur-c-clarke-quote/681461/12 "2014-02-17T00:13:04Z")
Lady Hillingdon (whoever she was) wrote in her journal in 1912 that “When I hear his steps outside my door I lie down on my bed, open my legs and think of England.” This has been paraphrased into - If it’s going to happen anyway, you may as well enjoy it. This is not quite what the honorable lady meant. ---
**Author:** ![nphoenix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/6de8d8/32.png) [@nphoenix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nphoenix)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2014, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-an-arthur-c-clarke-quote/681461/13 "2014-02-17T00:22:49Z")
> [@Indistinguishable](#): > > While we’re on the subject, how about “The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system.”? Is that an Arthur C. Clarke quote? > > Every reference I can find on the Internet traces to Tim Kreider (almost all to his 2012 New York Times essay, but also [this](http://www.thepaincomics.com/weekly070307a.htm) from 2007). Can anyone find the source in Arthur C. Clarke? _Los Angeles Free Press_, p. 42-43, 47. April 25, 1969. Gene Youngblood interviewing Clarke about _2001_: > [@](#): > > GENE: …You see the average person doesn’t see it. All he sees is that he’s going to be replaced by a computer, reduced to an IBM card and filed away. > > CLARKE: The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system. > > GENE: Precisely. Now, we feel that if only this idea had come across in _2001_, instead of depicting machines as ominous and destructive… > > CLARKE: But it would have been another film. Be thankful for what you’ve got… Reprinted in _The Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey_, Ed. Stephanie Schwamm. Random House, 2010. ---
**Author:** ![nphoenix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/6de8d8/32.png) [@nphoenix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nphoenix)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2014, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-an-arthur-c-clarke-quote/681461/14 "2014-02-17T00:38:51Z")
> [@AncientHumanoid](#): > > Interesting how multiple people said the same (or similar) thing around the same general time period. If you’re referring to the Dale Carnegie quote about the inevitable, his influence on popular culture in the first half of the twentieth century cannot be overstated. Everybody from atheists to evangelicals to A.A.to Japanese corporate managers drew on his lectures, books and seminars, with many claiming him for their own, and many of his aphorisms found their way into other authors’ work without attribution. Apparently Carnegie was not particularly proprietary about his work, writing, in _How to Develop Self Confidence and Influence People by Public Speaking_ (Pocket Books, 1956): > [@](#): > > “The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?” ---
**Author:** ![nphoenix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/6de8d8/32.png) [@nphoenix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nphoenix)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2014, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-an-arthur-c-clarke-quote/681461/15 "2014-02-17T00:55:37Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > Lady Hillingdon (whoever she was) wrote in her journal in 1912 that “When I hear his steps outside my door I lie down on my bed, open my legs and think of England.” > > This has been paraphrased into - If it’s going to happen anyway, you may as well enjoy it. This is not quite what the honorable lady meant. The _Yale Book of Quotations_ (Ed. Shapiro, 2006), p. 359, says this is likely apocryphal: > [@](#): > > Attributed in Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, _The Rise and Fall of the British Nanny_ (1972). Gathorne-Hardy ascribes this passage to Lady Hillingdon’s “journal,” but no such journal appears to exist and it is likely that the quotation is apocryphal. An earlier version is in the _Washington Post_, 18 May 1943: “Stanley Baldwin’s son tells this story of the day his sister went out with a young man who wanted to marry her. She asked her mother for advice, in case the young man should want to kiss her… ‘Do what I did,’ said her mother, reminiscing of the beginning of her romance with the man who was to become Prime minister. ‘Just close your eyes and think of England.’” (Ellipsis in the original.) ---
**Author:** ![nphoenix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/6de8d8/32.png) [@nphoenix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nphoenix)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2014, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-an-arthur-c-clarke-quote/681461/16 "2014-02-17T01:56:18Z")
Owen Dudley Edwards suggests, in _British Children’s Fiction in the Second World War_, that this too is apocryphal: > [@](#): > > The old joke, that when Stanley Baldwin’s wife sought instruction before her marriage on what to do when Baldwin wished to exercise his conjugal privilege she was told ‘shut your eyes and think of the Empire’, was now rendered, "Lie back and think of England’. Also attributed to Queen Victoria. Of possible interest is an essay entitled “Of Parting Company” by “A.K.H.B.” that ran in Fraser’s Magazine in 1879. A.K.H.B. was the literary identity of Scottish clergyman the Very Rev. Andrew Kennedy Hutchison Boyd, 1825–1899, minister at St Andrews, who published extensive popular miscellany during the Victorian period and was considered one of the finest preachers of his time. In this essay, A.K.H.B. (apparently being paid by the word, and living on a clergyman’s salary) goes on _at length_ about every aspect of parting he can think of, stating, on p. 193, what may be a predecessor to the “lay back and think of England” line, and at any rate, covers the same general sense of resignation: > [@](#): > > He relates how a kind-hearted but philosophic Frenchman, aware of the necessity of submission to the inevitable, and desirous to express his sorrow and his submission at once to certain friends whose departure was imminent, devised the following line of idiomatic English to convey his mingled feelings : > > — Are you go ? Is you gone ? And I left ? Verra vell ! > > You may try, kindly reader, the next time the necessity occurs, whether that kind of thing will much help you. When the railway train is sweeping you away in one direction, and the great steamship bearing your brother in the other, who parted two hours since and may not meet any more in this world, _ **you may lean back and close your eyes and think of the poor Frenchman’s pathetic line** _, and aim at his judicious resignation. _Verra vell!_ There’s also a corollary in “Letter to an Invalid”, published in _The Sunday at Home_, a “Family Magazine for Sabbath Reading,” published in 1882 by the Religious Tract Society, London: > [@](#): > > If the sight of spring flowers, the delicate blade of grass, the bunch of autumn leaves, makes you long sadly for rambles in woods and lanes, _ **close your eyes, and think of all the lovely places that you have been privileged to see** _, of the glorious sunsets and clear dawns ; and as you think of God’s beautiful world, and say in reverent imitation, " It is good " — as you recall as vividly as memory may, light and shadow, seashore and mountain, I think you will be thrilled with a diviner feeling, and lose the sense of longing. I think it’s safe to say the notion of closing one’s eyes and thinking of a better place in times of adversity held great popular currency for the Victorian mind, and that writers of the next generation, in seeking to invoke a Victorian persona, would have found such sentiments an easy mark. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2014, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-an-arthur-c-clarke-quote/681461/17 "2014-02-17T03:37:21Z")
The reason some are associating the phrase with Heinlein might be the Lazarus Long maxim: “‘Cooperating with the inevitable’ means ‘roll with the punch’… it does not mean ‘stooling for the guards.’” ---
**Author:** ![nphoenix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/6de8d8/32.png) [@nphoenix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nphoenix)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2014, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-an-arthur-c-clarke-quote/681461/18 "2014-02-17T03:50:22Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > The reason some are associating the phrase with Heinlein might be the Lazarus Long maxim: “‘Cooperating with the inevitable’ means ‘roll with the punch’… it does not mean ‘stooling for the guards.’” Heinlein is riffing on Carnegie as well. Note the company in which Heinlein places Carnegie in his early story “By His Bootstraps” (_Astounding Science Fiction_, 1941, writing as Anson McDonald). Heinlein sends his protagonist back in time to retrieve certain essential reference materials. These include: [ul] [li]The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli.[/li][li]Behind the Ballots, by [James Farley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Farley).[/li][li]Mein Kampf (unexpurgated), by Adolf Schicklgruber.[/li][li]How to Make Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie.[/li][/ul] (There’s a crappy PDF copy of the story at [this Dutch SF site](http://pot.home.xs4all.nl/scifi/byhisbootstraps.pdf) - all rights reserved, I’m sure.) ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2014, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-an-arthur-c-clarke-quote/681461/19 "2014-02-17T04:38:24Z")
> [@nphoenix](#): > > _Los Angeles Free Press_, p. 42-43, 47. April 25, 1969. Gene Youngblood interviewing Clarke about _2001_: > … > Reprinted in _The Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey_, Ed. Stephanie Schwamm. Random House, 2010. Thank you very much! (For the sake of improving my Google-fu, how did you find this?) ---
**Author:** ![nphoenix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/6de8d8/32.png) [@nphoenix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nphoenix)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2014, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-an-arthur-c-clarke-quote/681461/20 "2014-02-17T05:55:34Z")
> [@Indistinguishable](#): > > Thank you very much! > > (For the sake of improving my Google-fu, how did you find this?) [Google Books](https://www.google.com/#q=%22The+goal+of+the+future+is+full+unemployment%2C+so+we+can+play.%22+-kreider&tbm=bks) is your friend. So are quotation marks — anybody who searches for a phrase on Google without them deserves whatever they get. (Note also the “-kreider” just to make sure we’re not duplicating your efforts.) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-an-arthur-c-clarke-quote/681461.md?page=2)