“Life's missed opportunities, at the end, may seem more poignant to us than those we embraced — because in our imagination they have a perfection that reality can never rival.”

Source: The Technological Society (1954), p. 19

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra

As quoted in Who Controls the Internet? : Illusions of a Borderless World (2006) by Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu
Context: Imagine discovering a continent so vast that it may have no end to its dimensions. Imagine a new world with more resources than all our future greed might exhaust, more opportunities than there will ever be entrepreneurs enough to exploit, and a peculiar kind of real estate that expands with development. Imagine a place where trespassers leave no footprints, where goods can be stolen infinite number of times and yet remain in the possession of their original owners, where business you never heard of can own the history of your personal affairs...

With Open Hands (1972)

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XIII: On Groundless Fears
Original: (la) Plura sunt, quae nos terrent quam quae premunt, et saepius opinione quam re laboramus.

Source: The Year of Pleasures

As quoted in The Jerusalem Post (18 November 2002) http://www.factsofisrael.com/blog/archives/000491.html; often misquoted as "Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." The quote is attributed to Abba Eban after the Geneva Peace Conference http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/geneva.html with Arab countries (21 December 1973).