Our own grandchildren may demonstrate that-sometimes- Gigantic is Beautiful.
Interpretation
Change can be beautiful and significant, even if it seems overwhelming.
In this quote, Arthur C. Clarke suggests that while gigantic changes or concepts may initially seem intimidating or daunting, they can ultimately reveal beauty and wonder. The mention of grandchildren hints at the evolution of perspectives across generations, implying that what might seem massive and overwhelming can also bring joy and admiration when viewed from a different angle.
In practice
A speaker at a family reunion might reference this quote while discussing how new technologies are transforming family interactions.
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'.
The mind of man is continuously unfolding into a greater recognition of its real plan in the creative order of the Universe.
When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying.
In every human society, there is an effort continually tending to confer on one part the height of power and happiness, and to reduce the other to the extreme of weakness and misery. The intent of good laws is to oppose this effort and to diffuse their influence universally and equally.
On a cosmic scale, our life is insignificant, yet this brief period when we appear in the world is the time in which all meaningful questions arise.
I was modest--they accused me of being crafty: I became secretive. I felt deeply good and evil--nobody caressed me, everybody offended me: I became rancorous. I was gloomy--other children were merry and talkative. I felt myself superior to them--but was considered inferior: I became envious. I was ready to love the whole world--none understood me: and I learned to hate.
The most moral activity of all is the creation of space for life to move around.
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