2001: A Space Odyssey Quotes

“Without those weapons, often though he had used them against himself, Man would never have conquered his world. Into them he had put his heart and soul, and for ages they had served him well. But now, as long as they existed, he was living on borrowed time.”

“Unless you obey my instructions, I shall be forced to disconnect you.”

“If he survived, those patterns would become eternal, for his genes would pass them on to future generations.”

“The stars were thinning out; the glare of the Milky Way was dimming into a pale ghost of the glory he had known—and, when he was ready, would know again. He was back, precisely where he wished to be, in the space that men called real.”

“I don’t want to insist on it, Dave, but I am incapable of making an error.”

“Even now, he could not fully accept the idea that Frank had been deliberately killed—it was so utterly irrational. It was beyond all reason that Hal, who had performed flawlessly for so long, should suddenly turn assassin.”

“Bowman could bear no more. He jerked out the last unit, and Hal was silent forever.”

“…there was already something in his gaze beyond the capacity of any ape. In those dark, deep-set eyes was a dawning awareness—the first intimations of an intelligence that could not possibly fulfill itself for ages yet, and might soon be extinguished forever.”

“Speculation was a waste of time: he must wait until there was more evidence.”

“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.”

“It was barely audible, yet it stopped them dead, so that they stood paralyzed on the trail with their jaws hanging slackly.”

“The thing’s hollow—it goes on forever—and—oh my God!—it’s full of stars!”

“And then, almost as if in response to his plea, Poole waved back. For an instant, Bowman felt the skin prickling at the base of his scalp. The words he was about to call died on his suddenly parched lips. For he knew that his friend could not possibly be alive; and yet he waved.”

“Someone had once said you could be terrified in space, but you could not be worried there. It was perfectly true.”

“…he had only to put the corpse where he had left the new baby at the last quarter of the moon, and the hyenas would do the rest.”

“Yet still he called stupidly, as if an incantation could bring back the dead: “Hello Frank…Hello Frank…Can you read me?”

“He had thought that a hibernating man showed no sign of life, but now he knew that this was wrong. Though it was impossible to define it, there was a difference between hibernation and death.”

“He could not possibly survive until Discovery II made its rendezvous with Japetus, four or five years hence.”

“The future was, very literally, in their own hands.”

“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, so that each age could profit from those that had gone before. ”