“Oh God, without them [libraries], what have we? We have no past and we have no future.”

— Ray Bradbury

Mojave magazine (November 1990)

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 "Oh God, without them [libraries], what have we? We have no past and we have no future." by Ray Bradbury?

Ray Bradbury 401

American writer 1920–2012

Scott Douglas (1963) American wheelchair tennis player

“We may not have a future, but you can't deny we have a past.”

Susan Beth Pfeffer book Life As We Knew It

Source: Life As We Knew It

“There is no doubt that we have a different vision of the past. What’s important is that I see no reasons for any kind of conflicts in the future. We have no interests that could be contradictory in the future.”

Ivica Dačić (1966) Serbian politician

Source: "Ivica Dacic: Forced solutions don’t lead to stability of the region" in The Srpska Times https://thesrpskatimes.com/ivica-dacic-forced-solutions-dont-lead-to-stability-of-the-region/ (18 September 2018)

“Thus we may have knowledge of the past but cannot control it; we may control the future but have no knowledge of it.”

Claude Elwood Shannon (1916–2001) American mathematician and information theorist

Coding theorems for a discrete source with a fidelity criterion. IRE International Convention Records, volume 7, pp. 142--163, 1959.
Context: This duality can be pursued further and is related to a duality between past and future and the notions of control and knowledge. Thus we may have knowledge of the past but cannot control it; we may control the future but have no knowledge of it.

“We face the future fortified with the lessons we have learned from the past. It is today that we must create the world of the future.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Source: Tomorrow Is Now (1963), p. xv
Context: We face the future fortified with the lessons we have learned from the past. It is today that we must create the world of the future. Spinoza, I think, pointed out that we ourselves can make experience valuable when, by imagination and reason, we turn it into foresight.