The intelligent minority of this world will mark 1 January 2001 as the real beginning of the 21st century and the Third Millennium.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on a significant point in time that marks a new era in human history.
Arthur C. Clarke suggests that the turning of the millennium is not just a calendar event but a pivotal moment in humanity's progression. He implies that those who reflect on the impact of technological and cultural changes will see January 1, 2001, as the true start of a new age, highlighting the transformative power of our intellectual evolution.
In practice
This quote can be used during a New Year's Eve speech to highlight the significance of the upcoming year.
Nowhere in space will we rest our eyes upon the familiar shapes of trees and plants, or any of the animals that share our world. Whatsoever life we meet will be as strange and alien as the nightmare creatures of the ocean abyss, or of the insect empire whose horrors are normally hidden from us by their microscopic scale.
As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying.
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.
It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.
My favorite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelligence'.
Myth expresses in terms of the world - that is, of the other world or the second world - the understanding that man has of himself in relation to the foundation and the limit of his existence.
The law itself is on trial quite as much as the cause which is to be decided.
The Divine Truth is greater than any religion or creed or scripture or idea or philosophy.
...any belief in supernatural creators, rulers, or influencers of natural or human process introduces an irreparable split into the universe, and prevents us from grasping its real unity. Any belief in Absolutes, whether the absolute validity of moral commandments, of authority of revelation, of inner certitudes, or of divine inspiration, erects a formidable barrier against progress and the responsibility of improvement, moral, rational, and religious.
Every human being is intended to have a character of his own; to be what no others are, and to do what no other can do.
For there is no one so great or mighty that he can avoid the misery that will rise up against him when he resists and strives against God.
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