Prologue (p. 8)
Victim Prime (1987)
“Good, old-fashioned ways keep hearts sweet, heads sane, hands busy.”
“I'm fine with Nature's way, as long as Nature keeps it out of *my* way.”
“Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.”
It seems that this quote has only begun to be attributed to Einstein recently, the earliest published source located being the 2008 book Visualization for Dummies by Bernard Golden, p. 85 http://books.google.com/books?id=2ppZkdmpSlgC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA85#v=onepage&q&f=false. Before that it was often attributed to the physicist John Wheeler, who quoted the saying in Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information, p. 10 http://books.google.com/books?id=mdjsOeTgatsC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA10#v=onepage&q&f=false. In fact, this quip is much older; the earliest source located is Ray Cummings' 1921 short story "The Time Professor", which includes the passage https://books.google.com/books?id=sXpDAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA371#v=onepage&q=%22time%20is%20what%20keeps%20everything%20from%20happening%20at%20once%22&f=false: '"I do know what time is," Tubby declared. He paused. "Time," he added slowly -- "time is what keeps everything from happening at once ...".' Cummings repeated the quote in his 1922 science fiction novel The Girl in the Golden Atom, available on Project Gutenberg here http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21094 (according to Science-Fiction: The Early Years by Everett F. Bleiler, p. 171 http://books.google.com/books?id=KEZxhkG5eikC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA171#v=onepage&q&f=false, the novel was a composite of two earlier stories published in 1919 and 1920). Chapter V http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21094/21094-h/21094-h.htm#CHAPTER_V contains the following paragraph: The Big Business Man smiled. "Time," he said, "is what keeps everything from happening at once." The next-earliest source found for this quote is another book by Ray Cummings, The Man Who Mastered Time http://books.google.com/books?id=YdZEAAAAYAAJ&q=%22everything+from+happening+at+once%22#search_anchor from 1929, and no published examples of the quote from authors other than Cummings can be found until the 1962 Film Facts: Volume 5 where it appears on p. 48 http://books.google.com/books?id=sr0vAQAAIAAJ&q=%22everything+from+happening+at+once%22#search_anchor. So, it seems likely that Ray Cummings is the real originator of this saying.
Misattributed
Quote of Metzinger in 'The Wild Men of Paris', by Gelett Burgess https://monoskop.org/images/f/f3/Burgess_Gelett_1910_The_Wild_Men_of_Paris.pdf, in 'The Architectural Record, Vol XXVII, May 1910, p. 414
Terry Gifford, LLO, pages 686-687
1900s, Stickeen (1909)
Ch III : The Tool
Terre des Hommes (1939)
Context: !-- There was a time when a flyer sat at the centre of a complicated works. Flight set us factory problems. The indicators that oscillated on the instrument panel warned us of a thousand dangers. But in the machine of today we forget that motors are whirring: the motor, finally, has come to fulfil its function, which is to whirr as a heart beats—and we give no thought to the beating of our heart. Thus, --> Precisely because it is perfect the machine dissembles its own existence instead of forcing itself upon our notice.
And thus, also, the realities of nature resume their pride of place. It is not with metal that the pilot is in contact. Contrary to the vulgar illusion, it is thanks to the metal, and by virtue of it, that the pilot rediscovers nature. As I have already said, the machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.
Numerous, nevertheless, are the moralists who have attacked the machine as the source of all the ills we bear, who, creating a fictitious dichotomy, have denounced the mechanical civilization as the enemy of the spiritual civilization.
If what they think were really so, then indeed we should have to despair of man, for it would be futile to struggle against this new advancing chaos. The machine is certainly as irresistible in its advance as those virgin forests that encroach upon equatorial domains.
“Time is nature's way to keep everything from happening all at once.”
Wheeler quoted this saying in Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information (1990), p. 10 http://books.google.com/books?id=mdjsOeTgatsC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA10#v=onepage&q&f=false, with a footnote attributing it to "graffiti in the men's room of the Pecan Street Cafe, Austin, Texas". Later publications, such as Paul Davies' 1995 book About Time (p. 236), credited Wheeler with variations of this saying, but the quip is actually much older. The earliest known source is Ray Cummings' 1922 science fiction novel The Girl in the Golden Atom, http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21094 Ch. V: " 'Time,' he said, 'is what keeps everything from happening at once.' " It also appears in his 1929 novel The Man Who Mastered Time. http://books.google.com/books?id=YdZEAAAAYAAJ&q=%22everything+from+happening+at+once%22#search_anchor The earliest known occurrence other than Cummings is from 1962 in Film Facts: Volume 5, p. 48 http://books.google.com/books?id=sr0vAQAAIAAJ&q=%22everything+from+happening+at+once%22.
Misattributed
“In many ways an artistic nature unfits a man for practical existence.”
A Lodging for the Night.
The New Arabian Nights (1882)
