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'.
Peace will come With tranquility and splendor on the wheels of fire But will bring us no reward when her false idols fall.
I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them.
There was a time when time did not yet exist. β¦ The rejection of birth is nothing but the nostalgia for this time before time.
Where a man's heart is, there is his treasure also.
We can't live in a state of perpetual doubt, so we make up the best story possible and we live as if the story were true.
Where a reputation for intolerance is more feared than a reputation for vice itself, all manner of evil may be expected to flourish.
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