“Today we live in the midst of upheaval and crisis. We do not know where we are going, nor even where we ought to be going.”
Address given in Copenhagen "Physics in Denmark: The First Four Hundred Years" (6 March 1996) http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/articles/pais/index.html?print=1
Context: Today we live in the midst of upheaval and crisis. We do not know where we are going, nor even where we ought to be going. Awareness is spreading that our future cannot be a straight extension of the past or the present … The century now approaching its end has been one of indiscriminate violence, it has been perhaps the most murderous one in Western history of which we have record. Yet I would think that what will strike people most when, hundreds of years from now, they will look back on our days is that this was the age when the exploration of space began, the microchip was invented, revolutions in transport and communication virtually annihilated time and distance, transforming the world into a "global village," and relativity theory, quantum mechanics, and the structure of the atom were discovered, in brief that this has been the century of science and technology.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Abraham Pais 19
American Physicist 1918–2000Related quotes

Guitar Craft Monograph III: Aphorisms, Oct. 27 1988

Prologue
Jacques le Fataliste (1796)

Why Violinist Hilary Hahn Will Never Just Stick to the Classical Repertoire (2012)

Source: Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

Source: The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961), p. 261.