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Quotes of the Day for 29 July 2008 – The Future
It was on this day in 1970 that Alvin and Heidi Toffler published Future Shock, although it was three books later before Heidi's name appeared on the cover. Future Shock was one of those "important books" that everyone seemed to be talking about, generally deploring the frantic rate of change we were experiencing. I remember 1970 well enough to know that most of the change since then has been positive, and I think the same could be said of most of human history. Most of my quotes on the subject, and there are a lot of them, suggest that our work is always in the present.
The quotes:
I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.
- Alan B. Watts
The Future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.
- Clive Staples Lewis, 1898 - 1963
We were making the future, he said, and hardly any of us troubled to think what future we were making. And here it is!.
- Herbert George Wells, 1866 - 1946
Cease to inquire what the future has in store, and take as a gift whatever the day brings forth.
- Horace, 65 - 8 BC
It is difficult to live in the present, ridiculous to live in the future, and impossible to live in the past. Nothing is as far away as one minute ago.
- James Alonzo Bishop, 1907 - 1987
I don't describe the future. I try to prevent it.
- Ray Douglas Bradbury
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