“Temporal agents always notice time and date; we must.”

—  Robert A. Heinlein, book "—All You Zombies—"

"—All You Zombies—" (1958)
Context: I was polishing a brandy snifter when the Unmarried Mother came in. I noted the time — 10: 17 P. M. zone five, or eastern time, November 7th, 1970. Temporal agents always notice time and date; we must.
The Unmarried Mother was a man twenty-five years old, no taller than I am, childish features and a touchy temper. I didn't like his looks — I never had — but he was a lad I was here to recruit, he was my boy. I gave him my best barkeep's smile.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Temporal agents always notice time and date; we must." by Robert A. Heinlein?
Robert A. Heinlein photo
Robert A. Heinlein557
American science fiction author 1907–1988

Related quotes

“If we are to understand the interactions of a large number of agents, we must first be able to describe the capabilities of individual agents.”

John H. Holland (1929–2015) US university professor

Source: Hidden Order - How Adaptation Builds Complexity (1995), Ch 1. Basic Elements, p. 7

Dante Alighieri photo

“Time moves and yet we do not notice it.”

Dante Alighieri book Purgatorio

Canto IV, line 9 (tr. Mandelbaum).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio

John D. Barrow photo

“Location is not, as the estate agents say, everything. We must also consider our place in history.”

John D. Barrow (1952–2020) British scientist

The Book of Universes: Exploring the Limits of the Cosmos (2011), ch. 2, p. 23

Frank Zappa photo

“Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

Source: Real Frank Zappa Book

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“We must use time creatively - and forever realize that the time is always hope to do great things.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Joan Robinson photo

“An agent must have some discretion.”

Joan Robinson (1903–1983) English economist

Source: Contributions to Modern Economics (1978), Chapter 22, Socialist Affluence., p. 246

W. Somerset Maugham photo

“We must go through life so inconspicuously that Fate does not notice us.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 38, p. 129

Douglas Adams photo

“We notice things that don't work. We don't notice things that do. We notice computers, we don't notice pennies. We notice e-book readers, we don't notice books.”

Douglas Adams book The Salmon of Doubt

Source: The Salmon of Doubt

George Holmes Howison photo

“[T]he word "eternal" must by him be taken to stand for what "temporal" does not and cannot stand for; namely, the unchangeable Ground presupposed by the changing temporal; the necessary as against the contingent; the independent as against the dependent; the primary as against the derivative; the self-existent as against that which exists in and through it; the genuine cause, the causa sui, as against that which is after all nothing but effect, however it may be tied, by the causa sui, in an unrupturable chain of antecedent and consequent. Or we may say it means the noumenon as against the phenomenon; or, in fine, the thing in itself as against the thing in other. That is, the relation between the eternal and the temporal is not, and cannot be, only another case of the temporal relation. The relation is just one of pure reason, and is, in fact, sui generis: the eternal does not precede the temporal by date, but only in logic; it is the sine qua non without which the temporal cannot exist, nor is even conceivable. In brief, throughout my book I mean by the "eternal" simply the Real as contrasted with the apparent; the world of self-active causes as contrasted with the world of derivative effects, in so far passive.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Appendix D: Reply to a Review in the New York Tribune, p.412-3

Benjamin R. Barber photo

“We know ourselves by understanding our temporality, our embeddedness in time, our connection to roots—even roots from which we have knowingly severed ourselves.”

Benjamin R. Barber (1939–2017) US political scientist

Source: An Aristocracy of Everyone (1992), p. 22

Related topics