Quotes about the future
page 36

“We need 21st-century answers. And we will find satisfactory answers only if they are grounded in a vision we can all recognise, and one that seeks the common good. It is no use treating God as a means to a 21st-century Europe: to do so is the creation of an idol, not the service of the true God whose revelation in Christ is the foundation of our values. I shall be seeking to argue that Europe's future lies in a process of subsidiarity, re-imagination and inclusion, especially the development of concepts of intermediate communities of many kinds. This is a theological vision, one that allows commonality of vision, but sets strong boundaries to what is acceptable.”

Justin Welby (1956) British Anglican bishop; the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury

Address to the Catholic Institute of Paris (November 19, 2016)

God, Imagination, Communication, Strong

“Natural science is the attempt to comprehend nature by precise concepts.
According to the concepts by which we comprehend nature not only are observations completed at every instant but also future observations are pre-determined as necessary, or, in so far as the concept-system is not quite adequate therefor, they are predetermined as probable; these concepts determine what is "possible" (accordingly also what is "necessary," or the opposite of which is impossible), and the degree of the possibility (the "probability") of every separate event that is possible according to them, can be mathematically determined, if the event is sufficiently precise.
If what is necessary or probable according to these concepts occurs, then the latter are thereby confirmed and upon this confirmation by experience rests our confidence in them. If, however, something happens which according to them is not expected and which is therefore according to them impossible or improbable, then arises the problem so to complete them, or if necessary, to transform them, that according to the completed or ameliorated concept-system, what is observed ceases to be impossible or improbable. The completion or amelioration of the concept-system forms the "explanation" of the unexpected observation. By this process our comprehension of nature becomes gradually always more complete and assured, but at the same time recedes even farther behind the surface of phenomena.”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

Theory of Knowledge
Gesammelte Mathematische Werke (1876)

Confidence, Mathematics, Nature, Problem

“First, Greece: for modem Greeks, as I intimated, the future could mirror ‘the past’ past’ in more than one way, since there was a clear split in that past. One school argued for the Byzantine roots and glory of Greece. They pointed to the massive influx of Slavic immigrants in the sixth and succeeding centuries throughout the Balkans and Greece, and claimed that this had weakened the links with a decayed Hellenic (or Hellenistic— Roman) culture. What was Byzantine was essentially Orthodox Christianity only the Greek language and liturgy retained any connection with a pre-Christian past. In the Orthodox millet of the Ottoman empire, Christianity had kept a Byzantine Greek ethnic alive, as in a chrysalis, ready to be transformed under the impact of Western ideas and commercialization in the late eighteenth century.8’ For the Byzantine-Orthodox clergy and their flocks, for the notables in the Mores and Phanariots in Constantinople, this grandiose dream of a restored Byzantine empire under Greek control located the re-nascent Greek people and charted their future in the Aegean and Ionia. It also pointed the way to a restored agrarian society of peasants, notables and clergy, essentially smallholders, but led by educated Orthodox elites under the Patriarch.”

Anthony D. Smith (1939–2016) British academic

Source: The Ethnic Origins of Nations (1987), p. 203.

People, Education, School, Dreams

“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 (1907–1985) Dutch futurologist

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

Change

“The religions are all alike, no matter what they call themselves. They have no future—certainly none for the Germans. Fascism, if it likes, may come to terms with the Church. So shall I. Why not? That will not prevent me from tearing up Christianity root and branch, and annihilating it in Germany.”

Hermann Rauschning (1887–1982) German politician

Source: The Voice of Destruction (1940), p. 49

Religion, Tear

“Centuries ago, sailors on long voyages used to leave a pair of pigs on every deserted island. Or they'd leave a pair of goats. Either way, on any future visit, the island would be a source of meat. These islands, they were pristine. These were home to breeds of birds with no natural predators. Breeds of birds that lived nowhere else on earth. The plants there, without enemies they evolved without thorns or poisons. Without predators and enemies, these islands, they were paradise. The sailors, the next time they visited these islands, the only things still there would be herds of goats or pigs. …. Does this remind you of anything? Maybe the ol' Adam and Eve story? …. You ever wonder when God's coming back with a lot of barbecue sauce?”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 23

God, Way, Home, Nature

“My most profound confidence is however based upon the fact that at the head of Germany there stands a man by his entire development, his desires, and striving can only have been destined by fate to lead our people into a brighter future.”

Alfred Jodl (1890–1946) German general

November 7, 1943 speech to Gauleiters in Munich. Quoted in "The Trial of the Germans" by Eugene Davidson - History - 1997.

Fate, People, Confidence

“The danger which threatened the natives in the future, at any rate in the mining districts, would arise from the desire to obtain a constant and cheap supply of native labour for the mines. It would be the duty of those in authority to guard the native against the oppressive laws which were in force in the Dutch Republics. In conclusion, he protested against a policy of harshness and violence in South Africa. We should try to inculcate forbearance, wisdom, and the generosity into the minds of those who had the government of the country.”

James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce (1838–1922) British academic, jurist, historian and Liberal politician

Speech to the Women's National Liberal Association Conference, Memorial Hall, London (12 June 1901), quoted in The Times (13 June 1901), p. 12.
1900s

Wisdom, Law, Country

“PROUN alters the conventional forms of the arts and leaves behind the image of the petty individualist, who locked himself in his office and hid seated before a drawing easel, starting one picture and finishing another.
The future life — this is the reinforced concrete slab for the communist foundation of the nations of the entire world. With the aid of the PROUN one can build a unified city-commune on that foundation, intended for the life of all mankind.”

El Lissitsky (1890–1941) Soviet artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer and architect

1915 - 1925, Theses on the 'PROUN': from painting to architecture' (1920)

Life, World, Art, Communication

“Part of language design is perturbing the proposed feature in various directions to see how it might generalize in the future.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[199709032332.QAA21669@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Parting

“I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.”

E. B. White (1899–1985) American writer

"Coon Tree," The New Yorker (14 June 1956), The Points of My Compass: Letters from the East, the West, the North, the South (1962); reprinted in Essays of E.B. White (1977)

Feeling, Nature, Time

“In the future, women will increasingly want nurturer-connectors, since part of what he will be nurturing is her ability to protect herself.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

Women, Parting

““Whether there can be love without esteem?” Oh yes, thou dear, pure one! Love is of many kinds. Rousseau proves that by his reasoning and still better by his example. La pauvre Maman and Madame N____ love in very different fashions. But I believe there are many kinds of love which do not appear in Rousseau’s life. You are very right in saying that no true and enduring love can exist without cordial esteem; that every other draws regret after it, and is unworthy of any noble soul. One word about pietism. Pietists place religion chiefly in externals; in acts of worship performed mechanically, without aim, as bond-service to god; in orthodoxy of opinion; and they have this among other characteristic marks, that they give themselves more solicitude about other’s piety than their own. It is not right to hate these men,-we should hate no one, but to me they are very contemptible, for their character implies the most deplorable emptiness of the head, and the most sorrowful perversion of the heart. Such my dear friend never can be; she cannot become such, even were it possible-which it is not-that her character were perverted; she can never become such, her nature has too much reality in it. You trust in Providence, your anticipation of a future life, are wise, and Christian. I hope, I may venture to speak of myself, that no one will take me to be a pietist or stiff formalist, but I know no feeling more thoroughly interwoven with my soul than these are.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Johann Fichte Letter to Johanna Rahn from Johann Gottlieb Fichte's popular works: Memoir and The Nature of the Scholar https://archive.org/stream/johanngottlieb00fichuoft#page/14/mode/1up

Love, Life, Men, God

“Citizens United has a policy for ISIS and it’s quite simple: Acknowledge it; confront it; and destroy it. By any means necessary, wherever they are in the world. For the sake of future generations, we need to handle this problem without delay before it gets any larger, because right now it’s a cancer that is growing.”

David Bossie (1965) American political activist

9/11: Our Yearly Reminder http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/11/911-our-yearly-reminder/ (September 11, 2015)

World, Problem

“The hardest strokes of heaven fall in history upon those who imagine that they can control things in a sovereign manner, as though they were kings of the earth, playing Providence not only for themselves but for the far future—reaching out into the future with the wrong kind of far-sightedness, and gambling on a lot of risky calculations in which there must never be a single mistake. And it is a defect in such enthusiasts that they seem unwilling to leave anything to Providence, unwilling even to leave the future flexible, as one must do; and they forget that in any case, for all we know, our successors may decide to switch ideals and look for a different utopia before any of our long shots have reached their objective, or any of our long-range projects have had fulfillment. It is agreeable to all the processes of history, therefore, that each of us should rather do the good that is straight under our noses. Those people work more wisely who seek to achieve good in their own small corner of the world and then leave the leaven to leaven the whole lump, than those who are for ever thinking that life is vain unless one can act through the central government, carry legislation, achieve political power and do big things.”

Herbert Butterfield (1900–1979) British historian

Christianity and History (1949), p. 104.

Life, People, World, Imagination

“In one of my latest conversations with Darwin he expressed himself very gloomily on the future of humanity, on the ground that in our modern civilization natural selection had no play, and the fittest did not survive. Those who succeed in the race for wealth are by no means the best or the most intelligent, and it is notorious that our population is more largely renewed in each generation from the lower than from the middle and upper classes.”

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist

Human Selection, Popular Science Monthly, volume 38 (November 1890) page 93.
(Misquoted in the article Evolution and You, in Awake! magazine, 8 August 1995).

Intelligence, Nature, Wealth

“Faith is more basic than language or theology. Faith is the response to something which is calling us from the timeless part of our reality. Faith may be encouraged by what has happened in the past, or what is thought to have happened in the past, but the only proof of it is in the future. Scriptures and creeds may come to seem incredible, but faith will still go dancing on. Even though (because it rejects a doctrine) it is now described as "doubt."”

Sydney Carter (1915–2004) British musician and poet

This, I believe, is the kind of faith that Christ commended.
Obituary in The Independent (17 March 2001)

Faith, Reality, Past, Christ

“Lola's was not exactly a bar. It was a small beer-and-soda joint. There was a Coca-Cola box full of beer and soda and ice at the left of the door as you came in. A counter with tube-metal stools covered in yellow glazed leather ran down one side of the room as far as the jukebox. Tables were lined along the wall opposite the counter. The stools had long since lost the rubber caps for the legs and made horrible screeching noises when the maid pushed them around to sweep. There was a kitchen in back, where a slovenly cook fried everything in rancid fat. There was neither a past nor future in Lola's. The place was a waiting room, where certain people checked in a certain times.”

William S. Burroughs (1914–1997) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer

Source: Queer: A Novel (1985), Chapter Two

People, Beer, Time, Waiting

“Today we are asking our political system to do things of which the founding fathers never dreamed. The government they designed for a few hundred thousand people now serves a nation of almost 230 million people. Their small coastal republic now spans beyond a continent, and we now have the responsibility to help lead much of the world through difficult times to a secure and prosperous future.
Today, as people have become ever more doubtful of the ability of the government to deal with our problems, we are increasingly drawn to single-issue groups and special interest organizations to ensure that whatever else happens our own personal views and our own private interests are protected.
This is a disturbing factor in American political life. It tends to distort our purposes because the national interest is not always the sum of all our single or special interests. We are all Americans together — and we must not forget that the common good is our common interest and our individual responsibility.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Presidency (1977–1981), Farewell Address (1981)

Life, People, World, Dreams

“I'm going to usher in this entire new culture of the youth, obsessed with the future.”

Tom DeLonge (1975) American rock musician

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1517749/20051208/delonge_tom.jhtml

Youth

“These reminiscences are neither history, biography nor a diary, although they comprise something of each of these categories. What is presented is far from a complete account even of all of the incidents in which I had a part, but merely my recollections of events, refreshed by a reference to my own memoranda and a free use of staff studies and historical records made under my direction and supervision. It may assist the future historian when he seeks to account for the motives and reasons which influenced some of the actions in the great drama of war. It is also my hope that it will prove of some interest to the rising generations, who may learn thereform that a country and government such as ours is worth fighting for, and dying for, if need be.”

Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) U.S. Army general of the army, field marshal of the Army of the Philippines

Source: Reminiscences (1964), p. v

War, Hope, History, Motivation

“…he (a photographer) forgets that unless he has learnt when the tones of a picture are right or not, he will not know whether his work is good or bad, nor know what to try and overcome in future.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, The photographic print, p. 36

Forgetting

“For myself I can only say at the moment that I think we all need rest - I feel done for. So much for me: I feel that this is the lot which I accept and which will not alter.... And the prospect grows darker, I see no happy future at all.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo from Auvers, July 1890; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 648), p. 26 1890s

Happiness, Feeling, Thinking

“I am a 21st Century person who was accidentally launched in the 20th. I have a deep nostalgia for the future.”

FM-2030 (1930–2000) author, teacher, transhumanist philosopher, futurist and consultant

"Transhuman FM-2030" http://www.transhuman.org/transhumanfm-2030.htm, transhuman.org

Nostalgia, Personality

“If you take a look at science in its everyday function, of course you find that scientists run the gamut of human emotions and personalities and character and so on. But there’s one thing that is really striking to the outsider, and that is the gauntlet of criticism that is considered acceptable or even desirable. The poor graduate student at his or her Ph. D. oral exam is subjected to a withering crossfire of questions that sometimes seem hostile or contemptuous; this from the professors who have the candidate’s future in their grasp. The students naturally are nervous; who wouldn’t be? True, they’ve prepared for it for years. But they understand that at that critical moment they really have to be able to answer questions. So in preparing to defend their theses, they must anticipate questions; they have to think, “Where in my thesis is there a weakness that someone else might find — because I sure better find it before they do, because if they find it and I'm not prepared, I'm in deep trouble."”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Wonder and Skepticism
Skeptical Inquirer
19
1
1995
January-February
0194-6730
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/wonder_and_skepticism/

Hostility, Understanding, Question, Nature

“The essence of slavery is to imagine yourself to be a process, to have past and future, to have history. In fact, we have no history, we are not a process, we do not develop, nor decay (…).”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Freedom
Source: I am That, P.189.

Imagination, History, Past

“I sometimes think that we worry ourselves overmuch about the enduring consequences of our errors. They may work a little confusion for a time. In the end, they will be modified or corrected or their teachings ignored. The future takes care of such things. In the endless process of testing and retesting, there is a constant rejection of the dross, and a constant retention of whatever is pure and sound and fine.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870–1938) United States federal judge

Page 179
Other writings, The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921)

Error, Thinking, Time

“Whenever like mates with like (genetically), the statistical distribution curve, which describes the frequency of the purely fortuitous combinations of genes, is flattened out, its mode is depressed, and its extremes are increased. The reduces the number of the mediocre produced and increases the numbers both of the sub-normal and the talented groups. It is possible that, without this increase in the number of extreme variants, no nation, race or group could produce enough superior individuals to maintain a complex culture. Certainly not enough to operate or advance a civilization. …Any number of social customs have stood, and still stand, in the way of an optimum amount of selective matings. In a feudal society, opportunities are denied to many able men who, consequently, never develop to the high level of their biological potential and thus they remain among the undistinguished. Such able men (and women) might also be diffused throughout an "ideal" classless society and, lacking the means to separate themselves from the generality, or to develop their peculiar talents, would be effectively swamped. In such a society they could hardly segregate in groups. In fact, only a few of the able males might ever meet an able female who appealed to them erotically. Obviously an open society—one in which the able may rise and the dim-wits sick, and where like intelligences have a greater chance of meeting and mating—has advantages that other societies do not have. Our own society today—incidentally and without design—is providing more and more opportunities for intelligent matrimonial discrimination. It is possible that our co-educational colleges, where highly-selected males and females meet when young, are as important in their function of bringing together the parents of our future superior individuals as they are in educating the present crop.”

Conway Zirkle (1895–1972)

"Some Biological Aspects of Individualism," Essays on Individuality (Philadelphia: 1958), pp. 59-61

Women, Men, Education, Way

“I think the answer is that the case stands for the proposition that business people who feel that their faith is being burdened, that they get to come into court and have their day at court and make this argument. So, you cannot keep them out of court just because they’re business folks. And that is going to apply to everybody from the cake baker, to kosher butchers, to halal food distributors, across the board. Now, how those future cases will come out will depend on the specific facts of the case, of course. But I think that the general proposition here is a really, really important one. And that is that you do not give up your religious liberty right if you choose to start a business.”

Josh Hawley (1979) United States Senator from Missouri

Interview with Hobby Lobby attorney Joshua Hawley http://mbcpathway.com/2014/06/30/interview-hobby-lobby-attorney-joshua-hawley/ (June 30, 2014)

People, Faith, Food, Feeling

“God forbid, if the British rule disappears from India. Hindus will lord over it, and we will be in constant danger of our life, property and honour. The only way for the Muslims to escape this danger is to help in the continuance of the British rule. If the Muslims are heartily with the British, then that rule is bound to endure. Let the Muslims consider themselves as a British army ready to shed their blood and sacrifice their lives for the British Crown… Wherever you are, whether in the football field or in the tennis lawn, you have to consider yourselves as soldiers of a British regiment. You have to defend the British Empire, and to give the enemy [Hindus] a fight in doing so. If you bear it in mind and act accordingly, you will have done that and your name will be written in letters of gold in the British Indian history. The future generations will be grateful to you.”

Nawab Waqar-ul-Mulk Kamboh (1841–1917) Politician for India's independence

Viqar-ul-Mulk addressing a students’ gathering at Aligarh. Cited by R.C. Majumdar (ed.), History and Culture of the Indian People, Volume XI, Bombay, 1981, p.146. Quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (1995). Muslim separatism: Causes and consequences. ISBN 9788185990262

Life, God, Way, History

“Just like the Russians have thrown Soviet historiography into the dustbin, Indian negationism will also be thrown out in the near future.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

1990s, Negationism in India, (1992)

“Cultural and ethnic diversity benefit humanity’s future, survival, strength and excellence, promoting what I call cultural vigour, similar to the way in which molecular and genetic diversity promote “hybrid vigor” in nature and thus strength, resilience and a higher potential for a problem-free future.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

The Geopolitics of Culture: Five Substrates, (2014)

Way, Nature, Problem

“Deem not life a thing of consequence. For look at the yawning void of the future, and at that other limitless space, the past.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

IV, 50
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book IV

Life, Past

“I felt sorry for him at that moment. He only wanted what every man wanted—freedom from fear, a chance to raise children with a reasonable certainty that they would be allowed to do the same, a chance to look forward to the future without the knowledge that any plans made might be wrecked forever by some sudden act of violence.”

Michael Moorcock book The Eternal Champion

Source: The Eternal Champion (1970), Chapter 3 “The Eldren Threat” (p. 15)

Children, Fear, Knowledge, Freedom

“I have seen starry archipelagoes! and islands
Whose raving skies are opened to the voyager:
Is it in these bottomless nights that you sleep, in exile,
A million golden birds, O future Vigor?”

Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) French Decadent and Symbolist poet

J'ai vu des archipels sidéraux! et des îles Dont les cieux délirants sont ouverts au vogueur: Est-ce en ces nuits sans fond que tu dors et t'exiles, Million d'oiseaux d'or, ô future Vigueur ? St. 25 Le Bateau Ivre http://www.mag4.net/Rimbaud/poesies/Boat.html (The Drunken Boat) (1871)

Bird, Sleep, Night

“You are also continuing the same path that was initiated by Imam Khomeini, since you have always supported the Palestinian people, and I hope that we will meet each other at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the near future.”

Ismail Haniyeh (1963) Palestinian politician

http://www.khamenei.ir/EN/News/detail.jsp?id=20061210A

People, Hope, Support

“To me, it is self-evident that if Soviet perestroika succeeds, there will be a real chance of building a new world order. And if perestroika fails, the prospect of entering a new peaceful period in history will vanish, at least for the foreseeable future.
I believe that the movement that we have launched towards that goal has fairly good prospects of success. After all, mankind has already benefited greatly in recent years, and this has created a certain positive momentum.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Nobel Address (1991)

World, Peace, History, Chance

““That’s me, that old guy, that old drunk guy! Who claimed he was my dad? Like, me from the future?”
“One future, not the future. There isn’t any the future.””

Tim Powers book Three Days to Never

Source: Three Days to Never (2006), Chapter 22 (p. 313)

Guy

“My theory was that we are all fundamentally 'multiple personalities', beginning with the baby and the child, and slowly developing into more complex selves. If, for some reason, we abruptly cease to develop -- through some trauma that undermines self-confidence -- all those potential personalities are stunted and repressed. And some accident or violent shock may give one of them the opportunity to 'take over'. This suggests, of course, that in some mysterious sense, our 'future' personalities are already there, in embryo, so to speak, and that they also develop as we mature. We move from personality to personality, as we might climb a ladder. The Beethovens and Leonardos got further up the ladder than most of us; yet even they failed to reach the top, as we can see if we study their lives.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: The Janus Murder Case (1984), p. 228- 229

Confidence, Sense, Study, Baby

“Ru-h-ru-h-ru-h-h-h-h. Pooh-ooh-ooh. Tick-tick-tick-tick. Pre. R-r-r-r-r-uh-h. Huh! Bang. Su-su-su-ur. Booh-a-ah. R-r-r-r. Pooh…multitude of sounds, all mixed together. Motorcars, buses, carts, carriages, people, lamp-posts, trees.. all mixed together; in front of cafés, shops, offices, posters, shop windows: multitude of things. Motion and standstills: different movement. Movement in space and movement in time. Multitude of images and all sorts of ideas. Images are veiled truths. All different truths form what is true. What is individual does not display all in a single image.... Ru-ru-ru-u-u. Pre. Images are boundaries. Multitude of images and all sorts of boundaries. Elimination of images and boundaries through all sorts of images. Boundary clouds what is true. Rebus: where is what is true? Boundaries are just as relative as images, as time and space.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Mondrian's poem has strong connections with 'dynamism' of Futurism
Quote from his article 'The Grand Boulevards', Piet Mondriaan, in Dutch magazine 'De Groene Amsterdammer', 27 March 1920 pp. 4-5
1920's

People, Truth, Idea, Tree

“It is these chromosomes … that contain in some kind of code-script the entire pattern of the individual's future development and of its functioning in the mature state. Every complete set of chromosomes contains the full code…”

Erwin Schrödinger book What Is Life?

What Is Life? (1944)

“Dr. Kakorawi rightly laments that 'suppression of any part of any old composition or compilation like this can create difficulties and misunderstandings for future historians and researchers.”

Harsh Narain (1921–1995) Indian writer

The Ayodhya temple-mosque dispute: Focus on Muslim sources (1993)

Parting

“Every moment we're making decisions. If you want to understand the universe as a whole you'd have to include all those decisions including our own lives so that even in the future our presence is going to be felt one way or the other — so I think … our death as being — it's a death to a micro-phase self or a small self … it's a death into our larger self in that … this whole vast adventure is our larger identity.”

Brian Swimme (1950) American cosmologist

Meaningoflife.tv interview, 2013

Death, Way, Understanding, Thinking

“I prefer to call the most obnoxious feminists what they really are: feminazis. Tom Hazlett, a good friend who is an esteemed and highly regarded professor of economics at the University of California at Davis, coined the term to describe any female who is intolerant of any point of view that challenges militant feminism. I often use it to describe women who are obsessed with perpetuating a modern-day holocaust: abortion. There are 1.5 million abortions a year, and some feminists almost seem to celebrate that figure. There are not many of them, but they deserve to be called feminazis.A feminazi is a woman to whom the most important thing in life is seeing to it that as many abortions as possible are performed. Their unspoken reasoning is quite simple. Abortion is the single greatest avenue for militant women to exercise their quest for power and advance their belief that men aren't necessary. They don't need men in order to be happy. They certainly don't want males to be able to exercise any control over them. Abortion is the ultimate symbol of women's emancipation from the power and influence of men. With men being precluded from the ultimate decision-making process regarding the future of life in the womb, they are reduced to their proper, inferior role. Nothing matters but me, says the feminazi. My concerns prevail over all else. The fetus doesn't matter, it's an unviable tissue mass.”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

[The Way Things Ought to Be, Pocket Books, October 1992, 193, 978-0671751456, 92028659, 26397008, 1724938M]

Life, Women, Men, Happiness

“Much of social science has been built as a citadel against metaphysics and politics. Faithful to the outlook produced by the modern revolt against ancient philosophy, the classic social theorists were anxious to free themselves first from the illusions of metaphysics, then from the seeming arbitrariness of political judgments. They wanted to create a body of objective knowledge of society that would not be at the mercy of philosophical speculation or political controversy, and, up to a point, they succeeded. But now we see that to resolve its own dilemmas, social theory must again become, in a sense, both metaphysical and political. It must take a stand on issues of human nature and human knowledge for which no "scientific" elucidation is, or may ever be, available. And it must acknowledge that its own future is inseparable from the fate of society.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: Law in Modern Societyː Toward a Criticism of Social Theory (1976), p. 266-7

Fate, Faith, Nature, Knowledge

“We’re going to have to dig deep into our souls, confront our own self-doubt, and recognize that our destiny is in our hands – that our future is what we make of it. So let’s build the future we all know is possible. Let’s prove to our children that they really can reach for their dreams.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

2000s, A Challenge to Overcome (November 2007)

Children, Dreams, Soul

“Intervening variables are essential to psychological analysis because without them our description of economic behavior would remain incomplete, our understanding of behavior limited, and our predictions of future behavior incorrect.”

George Katona (1901–1981) American psychologist

George Katona (1951). Psychological Analysis of Economic Behavior. McGraw-Hill, New York. p. 31

Behavior, Understanding

“How is an ordinary citizen or subject of the King to stand up against this formidable machine, which, once it is in power, will prescribe for every one of them where they are to work; what they are to work at; where they may go and what they may say; what views they are to hold and within what limits they may express them; where their wives are to go to queue up for the State ration; and what education their children are to receive to mould their views of human liberty and conduct in the future?”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Broadcast (4 June 1945) for the 1945 general election, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Never Despair': Winston S. Churchill, 1945–1965 (London: Heinemann, 1988), p. 34
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Children, Education

“The future is no place to place your better days.”

Dave Matthews (1967) American singer-songwriter, musician and actor

Cry Freedom
Crash (1996)

“While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced we have now passed the worst and with continued unity of effort we shall rapidly recover. There is one certainty of the future of a people of the resources, intelligence and character of the people of the United States—that is, prosperity.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

Address at annual dinner of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States (1 May 1930). Hoover is sometimes misreported as having said on this occasion or another, "Prosperity is just around the corner"; reported in Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), p. 48.

People, Intelligence, Effort

“As I was writing about Grace Marks, and about her interlude in the Asylum, I came to see her in context — the context of other people's opinions, both the popular images of madness and the scientific explanations for it available at the time. A lot of what was believed and said on the subject appears like sheer lunacy to us now. But we shouldn't be too arrogant — how many of our own theories will look silly when those who follow us have come up with something better? But whatever the scientists may come up with, writers and artists will continue to portray altered mental states, simply because few aspects of our nature fascinate people so much. The so-called mad person will always represent a possible future for every member of the audience — who knows when such a malady may strike? When "mad," at least in literature, you aren't yourself; you take on another self, a self that is either not you at all, or a truer, more elemental one than the person you're used to seeing in the mirror. You're in danger of becoming, in Shakespeare's works, a mere picture or beast, and in Susanna Moodie's words, a mere machine; or else you may become an inspired prophet, a truth-sayer, a shaman, one who oversteps the boundaries of the ordinarily visible and audible, and also, and especially, the ordinarily sayable. Portraying this process is deep power for the artist, partly because it's a little too close to the process of artistic creation itself, and partly because the prospect of losing our self and being taken over by another, unfamiliar self is one of our deepest human fears.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Ophelia Has a Lot to Answer For (1997)

People, Truth, Fear, Literature

“In this struggle President Bush will find, like Lincoln, and like one who came before Lincoln, that "a man's foes will be those of his own household." However hard and long it might be, this battle must be borne. For what is at stake is nothing less than the future of our entire civilization.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, Bush's Lincolnian Challenge (2002)

“There can be no dedication to Canada's future without a knowledge of its past.”

John Diefenbaker (1895–1979) 13th Prime Minister of Canada

"On Sir John A. Macdonald" Toronto Star (October 9, 1964)

Knowledge, Past

“I love to read the dedications of old books written in monarchies—for they invariably honor some (usually insignificant) knight or duke with fulsome words of sycophantic insincerity, praising him as the light of the universe (in hopes, no doubt, for a few ducats to support future work); this old practice makes me feel like such an honest and upright man, by comparison, when I put a positive spin, perhaps ever so slightly exaggerated, on a grant proposal.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Dinosaur in a Haystack

"The Razumovsky Duet", p. 263
Dinosaur in a Haystack (1995)

Love, Books, Hope, Feeling

“Perhaps you don’t desire poetry as much as you would like to have my torchy knowledge of your possible futures, but I dare say poetry will do you far more good. For knowing the future only makes you timid and complacent by turns, while poetry can shape you into the kind of souls who can face any future with boldness and wisdom and nobility, so that you need not know the future at all, so that any future will be an opportunity for greatness, if you have greatness in you.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Prentice Alvin (1989), Chapter 15.

Wisdom, Soul, Knowledge

“Each nation has different obstacles and different goals, shaped by the vagaries of history and of experience. Yet as I talk to young people around the world I am impressed not by the diversity but by the closeness of their goals, their desires and their concerns and their hope for the future.”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

Day of Affirmation Address (1966)

People, World, Hope, History

“When the enemy is demoralized from within… A single blow must destroy him. Aerial attacks, stupendous in their mass effect, surprise, terror, sabotage, assassinations from within, the murder of leading men… that is the war of the future.”

Hermann Rauschning (1887–1982) German politician

Source: The Voice of Destruction (1940), p. 10

Men, War

“I think I have this responsibility to my father’s generation, and especially future generations.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, Ai Weiwei: 'Every day I think, this will be the day I get taken in again...', 2011

Thinking

“Indeed, if any man can say, that it is not an interesting question, whether his existence terminate at death, or is to be resumed at a future period, and then to continue for ever, he must be of a low and abject mind. To a rational being, capable of contemplating the wonders of nature, and of investigating the laws of it, and to a being of a social disposition, his existence, and the continuance of his rational faculties, must be an object of unspeakable value to him; and consequently he must ardently wish that christianity… may be true. For to a philosopher, who forms his judgment by what he actually observes, the doctrine of soul, capable of subsisting and acting when the body is in the grave, will never give any satisfaction. To every person, therefore, who is capable of enjoying his existence, the christian doctrine of a resurrection opens a glorious and transporting prospect.”

Joseph Priestley book An History of the Corruptions of Christianity

General Conclusions, Part I : Containing Considerations addressed to Unbelievers and especially to Mr. Gibbon
An History of the Corruptions of Christianity (1782)

Death, Law, Soul, Question

“Reagan ended the long period of containment, saying he had a simple policy objective toward the USSR: "We win and they lose." He inspired a vision that eventually broke the Soviet Union, liberated Europe, and gave Russians a chance to live in a plural, representative democracy where they had the right to determine their own future. They didn't choose it.”

Eerik-Niiles Kross (1967) Estonian politician

America, welcome to the war (2016)

Democracy, Chance

“[JawlenskyPickWerefkin] Yes, we [ Marianne Werefkin and Gabriéle] shared very much the same tastes and ideas, when we lived together in this house (the so-called 'Russian house' in Murnau]. She was extremely perceptive and intelligent, but Jawlensky [living with Marianne Werefkin] didn't always approve her work... Suddenly Jawlensky would pick on some tiny detail of one of Marianne's best and most original pictures and exclaim: 'That patch of color, there, is laid on much too flat and smoothly. It's just like old Riepin' [famous Russian painter Ilya Repin ] and their common former teacher in Russia]. Of course it was nonsense and he was only saying it to annoy her. But Jawlensky really was a devotee of the 'touche de peinture' of the French Fauvists, rather than an innovator, a believer in a new kind of art of the future.”

Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) German painter

Source: Interview by Edouard Roditi (1958), pp. 118-119

Art, Color, Intelligence, Idea

“There are, of course, a number of epistemological questions, some of which lie more in the province of the philosopher than they do the economist or the social scientist. The one with which I am particularly concerned here is that of the role of knowledge in social systems, both as a product of the past and as a determinant of the future.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1960s, The economics of knowledge and the knowledge of economics, 1966, p. 1

Lie, Question, Knowledge, Past

“I appeal to all pupils, students and young people, asking you to focus on the horizons that are opening up for you, and which you could only dream of a year ago. Our future will depend on your desire for education and moral values as well as on your entrepreneurial spirit.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

New Year's Address to the Nation (1991)

People, Education, Dreams, Dependency

“I discovered that I had deluded myself into believing that this world held the answer to the future and that Communism was basically humanitarian in its approach to politics. No one duped me into joining, and the struggle to see through my folly has been a great personal struggle. You don’t discover some morning that everything you believe in, and perhaps have staked your life on, is a myth. The act of breaking with Communism was the most difficult one of my life.”

Phillip Abbott Luce (1935–1998)

As quoted in “Escape Artist: Recalling a YAF hero—the unlikely, liberating journey of Phillip Abbott Luce”, Shawn Steel, California Political Review, July-August (2000) pp. 23-28

Life, World, Communication, Personality

“My mother saw herself as a victim. Once upon a time she had shaped her future and made decisions -- she had left Somalia for Aden, divorced her first husband and chosen my father--but at some point, it seemed, she lost hope. Many Somali women in her position would have worked, would have taken control of their lives, but my mother, having absorbed the Arab attitude that pious women should not work outside the home, felt that this would not be proper. It never occurred to her to go out and create a new life for herself, although she can't have been older than thirty-five or forty when my father left. Instead, she remained completely dependent. She nursed grievances; she was resentful; she was often violent; and she was always depressed.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Ch. 5

Life, Women, Hope, Home

“Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

A Defence of Poetry http://www.bartleby.com/27/23.html (1821)

World, Feeling, Understanding, Singing

“It may be that everywhere else in the world, the ascendance of Flower Power began and ended in the sixties, Mr. Speaker, but in Montreal it began in 1971 and ended yesterday when Guy Lafleur retired. This is the end of a great era, Mr. Speaker. I am certain that the House and the entire population of Canada will join me in wishing him good luck in the future and thanking him for the unforgettable moments he has given us.”

Guy Lafleur (1951) Canadian ice hockey player

Canadian MP Lorne Nystrom comments on Lafleur's retirement, in the House of Commons. Quoted in Kevin Shea, "One on One with Guy Lafleur," http://www.legendsofhockey.net/html/spot_oneononep198802.htm Legends of Hockey.net (2003-03-16) About

World, Guy, Flowers, Housing

“If all this be not put in practize… it wil be beneficiall to our successors, if future men shal hereafter be of such nature as our predecessors, who were never negligent of so great advantage. …they may all deliver them selves when they will, from so much and so great labour.”

Simon Stevin (1548–1620) Flemish scientist, mathematician and military engineer

Disme: the Art of Tenths, Or, Decimall Arithmetike (1608)

Men, Nature

“I believe the time is coming when this question must be laid hold of by a Government, and that Parliament will feel that it dare not treat it in future as it has treated it in the past. These great meetings, as Mr. Mill very justly said, were not meetings so much for discussion as they were meetings for demonstration of opinion, and, if you like, I will add for exhibition of force. (Cheers.) Such exhibitions, if they be despised and disregarded may become exhibitions of another kind of force…I have been insulted in past times…that I was in favour of peace at any price…I believe that however much any of us may abhor the thought that political questions in any country should ever again be settled by force, yet there is something in the constitution of our nature that when these evils are allowed to run on beyond a certain period unredressed, that the most peace-loving of men are unable to keep the peace. (Hear, hear.) And bear this in mind,—that, however much we may wish political questions to be settled by moral means, yet it is no more immoral for a people to use force in the last resort for the obtaining and the securing of freedom than it is for a Government by force to suppress and deny that freedom.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Loud cheers, the audience rising.
Speech in Manchester (25 September 1866), quoted in The Times (26 September 1866), p. 9.
1860s

Love, Men, People, Peace

“I read your letters with my sister, and they give us both abundance of delight. Especially they please us two, when you talk in a religious strain,—not but we are offended occasionally with a certain freedom of expression, a certain air of mysticism, more consonant to the conceits of pagan philosophy, than consistent with the humility of genuine piety. To instance now in your last letter—you say, “it is by the press [sic], that God hath given finite spirits both evil and good (I suppose you mean simply bad men and good men), a portion as it were of His Omnipresence!” Now, high as the human intellect comparatively will soar, and wide as its influence, malign or salutary, can extend, is there not, Coleridge, a distance between the Divine Mind and it, which makes such language blasphemy? Again, in your first fine consolatory epistle you say, “you are a temporary sharer in human misery, that you may be an eternal partaker of the Divine Nature.” What more than this do those men say, who are for exalting the man Christ Jesus into the second person of an unknown Trinity,—men, whom you or I scruple not to call idolaters? Man, full of imperfections, at best, and subject to wants which momentarily remind him of dependence; man, a weak and ignorant being, “servile” from his birth “to all the skiey influences,” with eyes sometimes open to discern the right path, but a head generally too dizzy to pursue it; man, in the pride of speculation, forgetting his nature, and hailing in himself the future God, must make the angels laugh. Be not angry with me, Coleridge; I wish not to cavil; I know I cannot instruct you; I only wish to remind you of that humility which best becometh the Christian character. God, in the New Testament (our best guide), is represented to us in the kind, condescending, amiable, familiar light of a parent: and in my poor mind ’tis best for us so to consider of Him, as our heavenly Father, and our best Friend, without indulging too bold conceptions of His nature. Let us learn to think humbly of ourselves, and rejoice in the appellation of “dear children,” “brethren,” and “co-heirs with Christ of the promises,” seeking to know no further… God love us all, and may He continue to be the father and the friend of the whole human race!”

Charles Lamb (1775–1834) English essayist

Lamb's letter to Coleridge in Oct. 24th, 1796. As quoted in Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (1905). Letter 11.

Love, Men, God, Children

“The utmost possible regarding an individual is a statement as to some order of probability about the future. Heisenberg's principle has been seized upon as a basis for wild statements to the effect that the doctrine of arbitrary free will and totally uncaused activity are now scientifically substantiated. Its actual force and significance is generalization of the idea that the individual is a temporal career whose future cannot logically be deduced from its past.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Time and Individuality (1940)

Idea, Past

“Playboy: Then for now, aren't you asking home-computer buyers to invest $3000 in what is essentially an act of faith?
Jobs: In the future, it won't be an act of faith. The hard part of what we're up against now is that people ask you about specifics and you can't tell them. A hundred years ago, if somebody had asked Alexander Graham Bell, "What are you going to be able to do with a telephone?" he wouldn't have been able to tell him the ways the telephone would affect the world. He didn't know that people would use the telephone to call up and find out what movies were playing that night or to order some groceries or call a relative on the other side of the globe. But remember that first the public telegraph was inaugurated, in 1844. It was an amazing breakthrough in communications. You could actually send messages from New York to San Francisco in an afternoon. People talked about putting a telegraph on every desk in America to improve productivity. But it wouldn't have worked. It required that people learn this whole sequence of strange incantations, Morse code, dots and dashes, to use the telegraph. It took about 40 hours to learn. The majority of people would never learn how to use it. So, fortunately, in the 1870s, Bell filed the patents for the telephone. It performed basically the same function as the telegraph, but people already knew how to use it. Also, the neatest thing about it was that besides allowing you to communicate with just words, it allowed you to sing.
Playboy: Meaning what?
Jobs: It allowed you to intone your words with meaning beyond the simple linguistics. And we're in the same situation today. Some people are saying that we ought to put an IBM PC on every desk in America to improve productivity. It won't work. The special incantations you have to learn this time are "slash q-zs" and things like that. The manual for WordStar, the most popular word-processing program, is 400 pages thick. To write a novel, you have to read a novel—one that reads like a mystery to most people. They're not going to learn slash q-z any more than they're going to learn Morse code. That is what Macintosh is all about. It's the first "telephone" of our industry. And, besides that, the neatest thing about it, to me, is that the Macintosh lets you sing the way the telephone did. You don't simply communicate words, you have special print styles and the ability to draw and add pictures to express yourself.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

Steve Jobs, Playboy, Feb 1985, as quoted in “Steve Jobs Imagines 'Nationwide' Internet in 1985 Interview” https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/steve-jobs-imagines-nationwide-internet-in-1985-intervi-1671246589, Matt Novak, 12/15/14 2:20pm Paleofuture, Gizmodo. 1980s

People, World, Faith, Way

“It has been decided according to our Canon Law that long standing temples should not be demolished, but no new temple allowed to be built… Information has reached our... court that its environs and certain Brahmans who have the right of holding charge of the ancient temples there, and that they further desire to remove these Brahmans from their ancient office. Therefore, our royal command is that you should direct that in future no person shall in unlawful ways interfere with or disturb the Brahmans and other Hindus resident in those places.”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Aurangzeb's Benares farman to Abdul Hasan in 1659, see History of Aurangzib: Mainly Based on Persian Sources, Volume 3 by Jadunath Sarkar, p. 281; Emperors of the Peacock Throne: The Saga of the Great Mughals https://books.google.com/books?id=04ellRQx4nMC&pg=PA397 by Abraham Eraly, p. 387, Mughal Rule in India https://books.google.com/books?id=4aqU9Zu7mFoC&pg=PA115 by Stephen Meredyth Edwardes & Herbert Leonard Offley Garrett], p.115 Mughal Empire in India: A Systematic Study Including Source Material, Volume 2 https://books.google.com/books?id=1wC27JDyApwC&pg=PA468 by Shripad Rama Sharma, p. 268. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.62677/page/n295 Quotes from late medieval histories, 1650s and earlier

Law, Way, Personality

“Spirituality is much wider than any particular religion, and in the larger ideas of it that are now coming on us even the greatest religion becomes no more than a broad sect or branch of the one universal religion, by which we shall understand in the future man's seeking for the eternal, the divine, the greater self, the source of unity and his attempt to arrive at some equation, some increasing approximation of the values of human life with the eternal and the divine values.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

The Renaissance in India (1918)

Life, Religion, Idea, Understanding

“Since these questions lie in the future, imagination must supply the lack of experienced feeling in attaching value to them. But values can be only imperfectly anticipated.”

Herbert A. Simon book Administrative Behavior

1940s-1950s, Administrative Behavior, 1947

Lie, Feeling, Imagination, Question

“If there was in all France, between 1140 and 1200, a more typical Englishman of the future Church of England type than John of Salisbury, he has left no trace; and John wrote a description of his time which makes a picturesque contrast with the picture painted by Abélard, his old master, of the century at its beginning. John weighed Abélard and the Schools against Bernard and the Cloister, and coolly concluded that the way to truth lay rather through Citeaux, which brought him to Chartres as Bishop in 1176, and to a mild scepticism in faith. "I prefer to doubt," he said, "rather than rashly define what is hidden."”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Truth, School, Faith, Way

“I hope that no one is going to offer some kind of trade of (Serbia's) future status in the European Union for (recognising) Kosovo's independence. That would be a disaster, that would be an indecent proposal and … this is not the European spirit and way of thinking.”

Boris Tadić (1958) Serbian politician, President of Serbia 2004–2012

http://www.predsednik.yu/mwc/default.asp?c=304000&g=20070411122909&lng=eng&hs1=0

Hope, Way, Thinking

“Because of his social position there are left no limits to the power lust of the modern capitalist. He can interfere with inconsiderate egoism in the lives of his fellowmen and play the part of Providence for others. Only when we take into consideration this passionate urge for political power over their own people as well as over foreign nations are we able really to understand the character of the typical representatives of modern capitalism. It is just this trait which makes them so dangerous to the social structure of the future.”

Rudolf Rocker book Nationalism and Culture

Source: Nationalism and Culture (1937), Ch. 1 "The Insufficiency of Economic Materialism"

People, Understanding, Passion, Parting

“They will furnish credits which will serve us for the support of the Communist Party in their countries and, by supplying us materials and technical equipment which we lack, will restore our military industry necessary for our future attacks against our suppliers. To put it in other words, they will work on the preparation of their own suicide.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Reported by I. U. Annenkov in an article entitled, "Remembrances of Lenin", Novyi Zhurnal/New Review (September 1961), p. 147.
Attributions

Support, Suicide, Country

“The aggression of the Zionist entity against the nuclear reactor on 7 June 1981 will not stop the course of scientific and technical progress in Iraq. Rather, it is an additional strong stimulus to develop this course, and to provide it with even greater resources and with more effective protection. Despite our loss, this aggression confirms that Iraq really stands on the right path, offering the Arab nation a model and helping its governments to define the right or the best approach. This would open before us, the Arabs, brighter prospects for the future. It confirms what we have always said, that the long conflict between the Arab nation and Zionism will eventually result in our victory. The Arab nation expresses the right and the forward movement of history while the Zionist entity expresses aggression, crime and racialist and expansionist theories which the free peoples have renounced as part of the hated colonial past, and which has to end despite all resources at its disposal and the efforts by imperialism to keep it alive.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

President Saddam Hussein's Speech on National Day (1981)

Hate, People, History, Effort

“If you love this country, you’re working hard, you’re paying taxes and you’re obeying the law and you’d like to become a citizen, you should choose immigration reform over somebody that wants to send you back. If you’re a Muslim and you love America and freedom and you hate terror, stay here and help us win and make a future together. We want you. If you’re a young African American disillusioned and afraid, we saw in Dallas how great our police officers can be, help us build a future where nobody is afraid to walk outside, including the people that wear blue to protect our future.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

2010s, (July 26, 2016)

Love, Hate, People, Law

“Hitler’s undetermined political future becomes even less surprising if we bear in mind that the intellectual origins of Fascism share central tenets with the non-Marxist Left. According to one argument, despite its eventual collision with the conservative Right once Fascism tried to come to power, early Fascism had been in its promise, rather than in its eventual application, more socialist than capitalist, more plebeian than bourgeois.”

Thomas Weber (historian) (1974) German historian

Source: Hitler’s First War: Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War (2011), p. 253

“What we must not do is surrender to despair and hopelessness and the cynical assumption that there is nothing we can do. What we must do is turn our anger and outrage into a positive force for reforms that can help prevent future tragedies.”

Bernice King (1963) American minister, daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr.

"A Call for Prayer – and Action -- Against Violence in America" (2012)

Help, Despair, Anger

“The path of progress is the path we take towards our future.”

Benson Taylor (1983) composer and music producer from the United Kingdom

Twitter Post 2016 https://twitter.com/_bensontaylor/status/808033605469564929

“Just as mainstream literature shows us how our contemporaries view the present, and historical fiction shows us how they view the past (not, of course, what the present or the past were actually like), so speculative fiction shows us how they view the future. I happen to believe that my contemporaries' view of the past is not very important; but their view of the present is quite definitely important, and their view of the future is vital.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

"The Right of Things to Come", presentation for the Science Fiction Research Association (1978), as published in Castle of Days (1992)
Nonfiction

Literature, Past

“They (i. e., the peasants) could imagine no future more grim than their past.”

Glen Cook book She Is the Darkness

Source: She Is the Darkness (1997), Chapter 86 (p. 575)

Imagination, Past

“Some maintain that such a tendency distorts the curve of tradition. Do they derive their arguments from the future or the past? The future does not belong to them, as far as we are aware, and one be singularly ingenuous to seek to measure that which exists by that which exists no longer.”

Jean Metzinger (1883–1956) French painter

Du Cubisme (1912)

Past

“I now imagine a quantum theoretician who may even admit that the quantum-theoretical description refers to ensembles of systems and not to individual systems, but who, nevertheless, clings to the idea that the type of description of the statistical quantum theory will, in its essential features, be retained in the future. He may argue as follows: True, I admit that the quantum-theoretical description is an incomplete description of the individual system. I even admit that a complete theoretical description is, in principle, thinkable. But I consider it proven that the search for such a complete description would be aimless. For the lawfulness of nature is thus constituted that the laws can be completely and suitably formulated within the framework of our incomplete description.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

"Einstein's Reply to Criticisms" (1949)

Law, Imagination, Search, Idea

“I hope that seeing the excitement of solving this problem will make young mathematicians realize that there are lots and lots of other problems in mathematics which are going to be just as challenging in the future.”

Andrew Wiles (1953) British mathematician

Nova Interview

Hope, Mathematics, Problem

“Picturing things, taking a view, is what makes us human; art is making sense and giving shape to that sense. It is like the religious search for God. We are well aware that making sense and picturing are artificial, like illusion; but we can never give them up. For belief (thinking out and interpreting the present and the future) is our most important characteristic.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

undated quotes, The Daily Practice of Painting, Writings (1962-1993)

God, Art, Search, Thinking

“He checked, of course. Being sure and being willing to risk that surety against his future were not the same thing.”

Laura Anne Gilman book Flesh and Fire

Source: Flesh and Fire (2009), p. 148

“It's not easy, it's not easy. And I couldn't do it if I just didn't, you know, passionately believe it was the right thing to do. You know, I've had so many opportunities from this country, I just don't want to see us fall backwards - no. So - you know, this is very personal for me. It's not just political, it's not just public. I see what's happening, and we have to reverse it. And some people think elections are a game, they think it's like who's up or who's down. It's about our country, it's about our kids' futures, and it's really about all of us together. You know some of us put ourselves out there and do this against some pretty difficult odds. And we do it, each one of us, because we care about our country. But some of us are right and some of us are wrong, some of us are ready and some of us are not, some of us know what we will do to do on day one and some of haven't really thought that through enough. And so when we look at the array of problems we have and the potential for it getting - really spinning out of control, this is one of the most important elections America's ever faced. So as tired as I am - and I am - and as difficult as it is to try to kind of keep up with what I try to do on the road like occasionally exercise and try to eat right - it's tough when the easiest food is pizza - I just believe so strongly in who we are as a nation. So I'm going to do everything I can to make my case and, you know, then the voters get to decide.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

In response to the question, "How do you do it?" from Marianne Pernold The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/07/AR2008010702954.html Presidential campaign (January 20, 2007 – 2008)

People, Food, Exercises, Game

“If I had my choice to make again - and again and again - it would be Paris, and Paris, and still Paris. And not because I thought him 'the right man', but because I felt him to be my life's task - even if I knew beforehand that this task was doomed to failure. It isn't patience and sweetness of character that does it, but love, and obstinacy - not minding how it turns out. When a woman in love thinks a lot about her future happiness, you can be sure she's not very much in love.”

Laura Riding Jackson (1901–1991) poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer

Helen in A Trojan Ending (London: Constable, 1937)

Love, Life, Happiness, Failure

“[T]he peninsula flag means two very different things to the two Koreas. In the South it symbolizes a desire for peaceful co-existence, or at most for a unification of equal partners in the reassuringly remote future. In wall posters above the DMZ it has always symbolized the southern masses' yearning for "autonomous unification", meaning absorption by the North. It's worrying to think how inner-track propaganda is certain to misrepresent the South Koreans' eschewal of their state flag for this of all symbols — and at this of all events.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, On the February 8 Parade and the Olympics (February 2018)

Peace, Thinking

“I would like to offer an illustration. Imagine a house which is well designed from a material or practical point of view... Apart from these physio-functional demands, there are also psycho-functional demands which correspond with our optical, phonetic and tactile experiences. Until now, mankind has attempted to satisfy these 'supra-material' demands with a painting on the wall or a sculpture in a room.... the architecture of the future will have to destroy this duality. Its task will be to express completely and fulfill all our demands.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote from Van Doesburg's unpublished writing, 'Fundamental principles', 1930; as cited in Theo van Doesburg, Joost Baljeu, Studio Vista, London 1974, p. 203
1926 – 1931

Imagination, Painting, Housing

“It is not likely," remarked Joséphin Leclerc, "that the future will be such as you have seen it. I do not wish for the coming of socialism, but I dread it not. Collectivism at the helm would be quite another thing than is imagined. Who was it who said, carrying back his thoughts to the time of Constantine and of the Church's early triumphs : 'Christianity is triumphant, but its triumph is subject to the conditions imposed by life on all political and religious parties. All of them, whatever they may be, undergo so complete a transformation in the struggle that after victory there remains of themselves but the name and a few symbols of the last idea'?”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

Source: The White Stone (1905), Ch. VI, p. 238

Life, Imagination, Idea, Time

“The men seldom have any real, concrete notions of what combat is like. Their minds are full of romanticized, Hollywood versions of their future activity in combat, colored with vague ideas of being a hero and winning ribbons and decorations.”

Roy R. Grinker, Sr. (1900–1993) American psychiatrist and neurologist

Source: Men Under Stress, 1945, p. 44

Men, Color, Idea

“Once again, I challenge the Prime Minister to have an open debate with me on why he believes we must stay part of this failing, corrupt EU. The future of our nation is at stake. Mr Cameron, you have my phone number.”

Nigel Farage (1964) British politician and former commodity broker

Quote by Nigel Farage on an article written by himself in the Telegraph, 6 July 2012. The time will never be right for David Cameron to hold a referendum on the EU. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/9378567/The-time-will-never-be-right-for-David-Cameron-to-hold-a-referendum-on-the-EU.html 2012

Parting

“Choosing education is a very good decision, not only good for the student, but also for our country. The United States was the first nation in history to recognize that public education for every citizen, regardless of class or station, was vital to its future...”

Mitt Romney book No Apology: The Case for American Greatness

Source: No Apology: The Case for American Greatness, 2010, Chapter 8, pg. 196

Education, History, Decision, Country

“…The right to self-determination refers to the right of a given population (usually a nation) to create its own future more or less free from external coercion, but within the limits of the historical realities with which it is faced.”

Monte Melkonian (1957–1993) National Hero of Armenia

Source: The Right to Struggle (1993), P. 17.

Reality

Quotes about the future page 36

Quotes about the future
page 36