Childhood’s End

by

Arthur C. Clarke

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Chapter 1 Quotes

He felt no regrets as the work of a lifetime was swept away. He had labored to take man to the stars, and now the stars—the aloof, indifferent stars—had come to him.

Related Symbols: The Overlords, The Overmind
Page Number: 5
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

“Can you deny that the Overlords have brought security, peace, and prosperity to the world?”

“That is true, but they have taken our liberty. Man does not live—”

“—by bread alone. Yes, I know—but this is the first age in which every man was sure of getting even that.”

Related Characters: Rikki Stormgren (speaker), Alexander Wainwright (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Overlords, The Freedom League
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis:

With the arrival of the Overlords, nations knew that they need no longer fear each other, and they guessed—even before the experiment was made—that their existing weapons were certainly impotent against a civilization that could bridge the stars. So at once the greatest single obstacle to the happiness of mankind had been removed.

Related Symbols: The Overlords
Page Number: 19
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3  Quotes

“I can understand your fear that the traditions and cultures of little countries will be overwhelmed when the world state arrives. But you are wrong: it is useless to cling to the past. Even before the Overlords came to Earth, the sovereign state was dying. They have merely hastened its end.”

Related Characters: Rikki Stormgren (speaker), The Blind Welshman
Related Symbols: The Overlords, The Freedom League
Page Number: 36-37
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6  Quotes

Fifty years is ample time in which to change a world and its people almost beyond recognition. All that is required for the task are a sound knowledge of social engineering, a clear sight of the intended goal—and power.

Related Symbols: The Overlords
Page Number: 62
Explanation and Analysis:

The end of strife and conflict of all kinds had also meant the virtual end of creative art. There were myriads of performers, amateur and professional, yet there had been no really outstanding new works of literature, music, painting, or sculpture for a generation. The world was still living on the glories of a past that could never return.

Related Symbols: New Athens
Page Number: 68
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8  Quotes

Man was, therefore, still a prisoner on his own planet. It was a much fairer, but a much smaller, planet than it had been a century before. When the Overlords had abolished war and hunger and disease, they had also abolished adventure.

Related Characters: Jan Rodricks
Related Symbols: The Overlords
Page Number: 85
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10  Quotes

The human race continued to bask in the long, cloudless summer afternoon of peace and prosperity. Would there ever be a winter again? It was unthinkable. The age of reason, prematurely welcomed by the leaders of the French Revolution two and a half centuries before, had now really arrived. This time, there was no mistake.

Related Symbols: The Overlords
Page Number: 103
Explanation and Analysis:

Yet among all the distractions and diversions of a planet which now seemed well on the way to becoming one vast playground, there were some who still found time to repeat an ancient and never-answered question:

“Where do we go from here?”

Related Symbols: The Overlords
Page Number: 105
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

“It is a bitter thought, but you must face it. The planets you may one day possess. But the stars are not for man.”

Related Characters: Karellen (speaker), Jan Rodricks
Related Symbols: The Overlords
Page Number: 129
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

“There’s nothing left to struggle for, and there are too many distractions and entertainments. Do you realize that every day something like five hundred hours of radio and TV pour out over various channels? [...] Soon people won’t be living their own lives anymore.”

Related Characters: George Greggson
Related Symbols: New Athens
Page Number: 135
Explanation and Analysis:

Suppose, in [the Overlords’] altruistic passion for justice and order, they had determined to reform the world, but had not realized that they were destroying the soul of man?

Related Symbols: The Overlords, New Athens
Page Number: 139
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16  Quotes

The universe was vast, but that fact terrified him less than its mystery. George was not a person who thought deeply on such matters, yet it sometimes seemed to him that men were like children amusing themselves in some secluded playground, protected from the fierce realities of the outer world.

Related Characters: Jan Rodricks, George Greggson
Related Symbols: The Overlords, The Overmind, New Athens
Page Number: 144
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17 Quotes

Twenty years ago, the Overlords had announced that they had discontinued all use of their surveillance devices, so that humanity no longer need consider itself spied upon. However, the fact that such devices still existed meant that nothing could be hidden form the Overlords if they really wanted to see it.

Related Symbols: The Overlords, New Athens
Page Number: 151
Explanation and Analysis:

Nothing in [New] Athens was done without a committee, that ultimate hallmark of the democratic method […] Because the community was not too large, everyone in it could take some part in its running and could be a citizen in the truest sense of the word.

Related Symbols: The Overlords, New Athens
Page Number: 152
Explanation and Analysis:

“Everybody on the island has one ambition, which may be summed up very simply. It is to do something, however small it may be, better than anyone else. Of course, it’s an ideal we don’t all achieve. But in this modern world, the great thing is to have an ideal. Achieving it is considerably less important.”

Related Characters: Thanthalteresco / “The Inspector”
Related Symbols: The Overlords, New Athens
Page Number: 155
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

This was a thought that had never occurred to [George]. He had subconsciously assumed that the Overlords possessed all knowledge and all power—that they understood, and were probably responsible for, the things that had been happening to Jeff.

Related Characters: George Greggson , Jean Morrel , Jeffrey Greggson, Rashaverak
Related Symbols: The Overlords
Page Number: 166
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

In the space of a few days, humanity had lost its future, for the heart of any race is destroyed, and its will to survive is utterly broken, when its children are taken from it.

Related Symbols: The Overmind
Page Number: 173
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 20 Quotes

“All of our sojourn here has been based on a vast deception, a concealment of truths which you were not ready to face.”

Related Characters: Karellen (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Overlords, Karellen’s One-Way Screen
Page Number: 175
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21 Quotes

It was thus with [New] Athens. The island had been born in fire; in fire it chose to die. Those who wished to leave did so, but most remained, to meet the end among the broken fragments of their dreams.

Related Symbols: New Athens
Page Number: 181
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 23 Quotes

“And do you not resent being used as a tool by the Overmind?”

“The arrangement has some advantages: besides, no one of intelligence resists the inevitable.”

That proposition, Jan reflected wryly, had never been fully accepted by mankind.

Related Characters: Jan Rodricks (speaker), Rashaverak (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Overlords, The Overmind
Page Number: 200
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 24 Quotes

For all their achievements, thought Karellen, for all their mastery of the physical universe, his people were no better than a tribe that has passed its whole existence upon some flat and dusty plain. Far off were the mountains, where power and beauty dwelt […] And they could only watch and wonder; they could never scale those heights.

Related Characters: Karellen
Related Symbols: The Overlords, The Overmind
Page Number: 211
Explanation and Analysis:
No matches.