What was more, they had taken the first step toward genuine friendship. They had exchanged vulnerabilities.
Interpretation
Genuine friendship begins when individuals share their vulnerabilities with each other.
In this quote, Arthur C. Clarke emphasizes that true friendship is built on a foundation of trust and openness. By revealing their vulnerabilities to one another, individuals deepen their connection and foster a sense of mutual understanding and support, marking the beginning of a genuine and lasting friendship.
In practice
In a speech about the value of relationships, you might say, 'As Arthur C. Clarke wisely observed, genuine friendship begins when we share our vulnerabilities.'
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'.
Good nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty.
When friends speak overmuch of times gone by, often it's because they sense their present time is turning them from friends to strangers. Long before the moment came to say goodbye, I think, we said goodbye in other words and ways and silences. Then when the moment came for it at last, we didn't say it as should be said by friends. So now at last, dear Mouse, with many, many years between: goodbye.
Friendship is so weird. You just pick a human you've met and you're like, 'Yep, I like this one,' and you just do stuff with them.
We are easily comforted for the misfortunes of our friends, when those misfortunes give us an occasion of expressing our affection and solicitude.
Just thinking about a friend makes you want to do a happy dance, because a friend is someone who loves you in spite of your faults.
If a friend asks a favor, you should grant it if it is reasonable; if not, tell him plainly why you cannot: You will wrong him and wrong yourself by equivocation of any kind.
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