“(…) time is not an illusion, but the flow of time is. So is change. In spacetime, the future exists and the past doesn’t disappear.”

— Max Tegmark , book Our Mathematical Universe

Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality (2014)

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Max Tegmark 24

Swedish-American cosmologist 1967

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“Time exists in order that everything doesn’t happen all at once…and space exists so that it doesn’t all happen to you.”

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“Time present and time past
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“One of the most marked features about the law of mind is that it makes time to have a definite direction of flow from past to future.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

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Context: One of the most marked features about the law of mind is that it makes time to have a definite direction of flow from past to future.... This makes one of the great contrasts between the law of mind and the law of physical force, where there is no more distinction between the two opposite directions in time than between moving northward and moving southward.

“The real is the present, conceived not as a mathematical point between the present and the past, but as the union of present and past in a duration or permanence that is at the same time change. Thus the past as past and the future as future do not exist at all, but are purely ideal; the past as living in the present and the future as germinating in the present are wholly real and indeed are just the present itself. It is because of the presence of these two elements in the present… that the present is a concrete and changing reality and not an empty mathematical point.”

R. G. Collingwood (1889–1943) British historian and philosopher

Source: "Some Perplexities about time: with an attempted solution" (1925), p. 149. as cited in: Jonathan Gorman, "The transmission of our understanding of historical time." Historia Social y de la Educación 1.2 (2012): 129-152.

“Space-time in an expanding universe changes over time, so the full quantum description of a neutrino. in that type of universe is different in the past and the future. Neutrinos would behave in both expanding and unchanging "steady state" universes.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

Neutrino misbehaviour suggested 50 years ago

“The tenth penetration is, "All times penetrate one time. One time penetrates all times — past, present, and future. In one second, you can find the past, present, and future."”

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Thích Nhất Hạnh here quotes and interprets the "Ten Penetrations" of the Avatamsaka Sutra
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Context: The tenth penetration is, "All times penetrate one time. One time penetrates all times — past, present, and future. In one second, you can find the past, present, and future." In the past, you can see the present and the future. In the present, you can find the past and future. In the future, you can find the past and present. They "inter-contain" each other. Space contains time, time contains space. In the teaching of interpenetration, one determines the other, the other determines this one. When we realize our nature of interbeing, we will stop blaming and killing, because we know that we inter-are.

“A great future doesn’t require a great past.”

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“In this job an illusion of beauty is sold which doesn’t really exist like that.”

Heidi Klum (1973) German model, television host, businesswoman, fashion designer, television producer, and actress

Interview in Der Spiegel (10 February 2006) http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,druck-400167,00.html
Context: In this job an illusion of beauty is sold which doesn’t really exist like that. It’s like a work of art, an act. I cry in front of the camera but am not really sad. I’ve just come from a job, am made-up and made to look beautiful with fantastic clothes and hair and nails all done.

“There is not past, no future; everything flows in an eternal present.”

James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish novelist and poet

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“Is the flow of time something real, or might our sense of time passing be just an illusion that hides the fact that what is real is only a vast collection of memories?”

Lee Smolin (1955) American cosmologist

as quoted by Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence (2000)

“(…) time is not an illusion, but the flow of time is. So is change. In spacetime, the future exists and the past doesn’t disappear.”

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Max Tegmark 24

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