“We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing.”

“For it is only by forgetting that we ever really drop the thread of time and approach the experience of living in the present moment, so elusive in ordinary hours.”

Michael Pollan (1955) American author, journalist, activist, and professor of journalism

“Even when we think we are in the present moment we are in very subtle ways looking over its shoulder anticipating what's coming next. We're always solving a problem. And it's possible to simply drop your problem, if only for a moment, and enjoy whatever is true of your life in the present… This is not a matter of new information or more information. It requires a change in attitude. It requires a change in the attentiveness you pay to your experience in the present moment.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

“In the modern world we have invented ways of speeding up invention, and people's lives change so fast that a person is born into one kind of world, grows up in another, and by the time his children are growing up, lives in still a different world.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

“They did not know what we can now sense as we contemplate the course of history: that change begins in the soul before it shows in our lives…”

Franz Kafka book The Great Wall of China

“Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

“It's only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth -- and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up -- that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had.”

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004) American psychiatrist

“When we are mindful, deeply in touch with the present moment, our understanding of what is going on deepens, and we begin to be filled with acceptance, joy, peace and love.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

“We live in a political world
Where mercy walks the plank,
Life is in mirrors, death disappears
Up the steps into the nearest bank.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

“We can only begin to live when we conceive life as
Tragedy.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright