Fred Polak: Quotes about the future

Fred Polak was Dutch futurologist. Explore interesting quotes on future.
Fred Polak: 26   quotes 0   likes

“Every great thinker who has concerned himself with the historical process has speculated about the meaning of time and its flow in history. Marx, Hegel, Spengler, Toynbee, and Sorokin, each with his own variation on the theme of time-flow as mechanically patterned fluctuation, predict the future but ignore its dynamic interaction with the past and the present.”

Fred Polak

Source: The Image of the Future, 1973, p. 1 (partly cited in: European Centre for Leisure and Education (1975) Society and leisure. Vol. 7. p. 22)

History , Time , Past , Future

“Values, means and ends… [that drive this process in current societies; mean that we now] stagger under the double load of not only having to construct (his) own future but having to create the values that will determine its design.”

Fred Polak

Source: The Image of the Future, 1973, p. 9 as cited in: Rowena Morrow (2006) "Hope, entrepreneurship and foresight". In: Regional frontiers of entrepreneurship research

Future

“Awareness of ideal values is the first step in the conscious creation of images of the future… for a value is by definition that which guides a ‘valued’ future.”

Fred Polak

Source: The Image of the Future, 1973, p. 10 as cited in: Rowena Morrow (2006) "Hope, entrepreneurship and foresight". In: Regional frontiers of entrepreneurship research

Future

“The trends in modem technology reveal most clearly the contrasting modes of development in thinking about the future. Technology offers an unprecedented confirmation of the possibilities of the utopia, often far exceeding the utopian fantasies in its concrete achievements. Through technology, Homo sapiens can transform ail things; at last man appears to be master of his own fate.”

Fred Polak

Source: The Image of the Future, 1973, p. 142

Fate , Thinking , Appearance , Future

“Social change will be viewed as a push-pull process in which a Society is at once pulled forward by its own magnetic images of an idealized future and pushed from behind by its realized past.”

Fred Polak

Source: The Image of the Future, 1973, p. 1 (as cited in: H.C. Marais (1988) South Africa: perspectives on the future. p. 15)

Change , Past , Future

“Once he (man) became conscious of creating images of the future, he became a participant in the process of creating this future.”

Fred Polak

Source: The Image of the Future, 1973, p. 6

Future

“All kinds of separate, fragmented portions of the jigsaw puzzle are of little avail, unless they are fitted together in the best possible way, to form an image of the future depicting a number of main areas of development.”

Fred Polak

Source: Prognostics, 1971, p. 261

Way , Future

“The rise and fall of images of the future precedes or accompanies the rise and fall of cultures. The image of the future can act not only as a barometer, but as a regulative mechanism which alternately opens and shuts the dampers on the mighty blast-furnace of culture. It not only indicates alternative choices and possibilities, but actively promotes certain choices and in effect puts them to work in determining the future. A close examination of prevailing images, then, puts us in a position to forecast the probable future. Any culture which finds itself in the condition of our present culture, turning aside from its own heritage of positive visions of the future, or actively at work in changing these positive visions into negative ones, has no future…”

Fred Polak

Source: The Image of the Future, 1973, p. 300

Change , Future

“The rise and fall of images of the future precedes or accompanies the rise and fall of cultures. As long as a society's image is positive and flourishing, the flower of culture is in full bloom. Once the image begins to decay and lose its vitality, however, the culture does not long survive.”

Fred Polak

Source: The Image of the Future, 1973, p. 19

Flowers , Future