Aging & Wisdom Quote by Arthur C. Clarke

Clarke doesn’t plead for lifelong learning so much as he detonates the comforting myth that knowledge is a stable possession. The line is built like a trap: it starts with a reasonable policy-sounding premise about “schooling,” then snaps shut with arithmetic that makes complacency feel ridiculous. “Half” isn’t a statistic; it’s a rhetorical accelerant. Clarke’s point lands because it sounds empirically obvious in a technological age while quietly accusing the reader of living on intellectual credit.

The subtext is distinctly Clarke: the future isn’t merely coming, it’s actively invalidating you. By framing change as both erasure (“no longer true”) and surprise (“hadn’t been discovered”), he covers the two ways modernity humiliates certainty. The first half attacks dogma; the second exposes how much of what matters arrives after you’ve supposedly graduated into adulthood. School, in this view, isn’t preparation for life. It’s a maintenance plan for a reality that keeps updating.

Context matters. Clarke wrote from inside the 20th century’s breakneck curve - radar, satellites, nuclear physics, computing, spaceflight - fields where yesterday’s common sense becomes tomorrow’s museum exhibit. His phrasing—“a man knows”—dates the quote, but the engine is contemporary: careers churn, platforms shift, consensus science evolves in public view. The intent isn’t utopian self-improvement; it’s survival. If knowledge has an expiration date, then adulthood without continued education isn’t maturity. It’s just falling behind with confidence.