Future

"And on the day when He will gather them all together: O assembly of jinn, you took away a great part of men. And their friends from among men will say: Our Lord, some of us profited by others and we have reached our appointed term which Thou didst appoint for us. He will say: The Fire is your abode -- you shall abide therein, except as Allah please. Surely thy Lord is Wise, Knowing."

"Then surely on the day of Resurrection you will contend one with another before your Lord. Who is then more unjust than he who utters a lie against Allah and denies the truth, when it comes to him? Is there not in hell an abode for the disbelievers?"

"Nay, but serve Allah alone and be of the thankful. And they honour not Allah with the honour due to Him; and the whole earth will be in His grip on the day of Resurrection and the heavens rolled up in His right hand. Glory be to Him! and highly exalted is He above what they associate (with Him). And the trumpet is blown, so all those in the heavens and all those in the earth will swoon, except such as Allah please. Then it will be blown again, when lo! they stand up, awaiting. And the earth beams with the light of its Lord, and the Book is laid down, and the prophets and the witnesses are brought up, and judgment is given between them with justice, and they are not wronged. And every soul is paid back fully for what it did, and He knows best what they do. And those who disbelieve are driven to hell in companies; until, when they come to it, its doors are opened, and the keepers of it say to them: Did not there come to you messengers from among you reciting to you the messages of your Lord and warning you of the meeting of this day of yours? They say: Yea. But the word of punishment proved true against the disbelievers. It is said: Enter the gates of hell to abide therein; so evil is the abode of the proud. And those who keep their duty to their Lord are conveyed to the Garden in companies until when they come to it, and its doors are opened and the keepers of it say to them Peace be to you! you led pure lives so enter it to abide. And they say: Praise be to Allah Who has made good to us His promise, and He has made us inherit the land; we abide in the Garden where we please. So goodly is the reward of the workers. And thou seest the angels going round about the Throne of Power, glorifying their Lord with praise. And they are judged with justice, and it is said: Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the worlds!"

"Those who disbelieve are told: Certainly Allah's hatred (of you), when you were called upon to the faith and you rejected, was much greater than your hatred (now) of yourselves. They say Our Lord, twice hast Thou made us die, and twice hast Thou given us life; so we confess our sins. Is there then a way of escape? That is because when Allah alone was called upon, you disbelieved, and when associates were given to Him, you believed. So judgment belongs to Allah, the High, the Great. He it is Who shows you His signs and sends down for you sustenance from heaven, and none minds but he who turns (to Him). So call upon Allah, being sincere to Him in obedience, though the disbelievers are averse -- Exalter of degrees, Lord of the Throne of Power, He makes the spirit to light by His command upon whom He pleases of His servants, that he may warn (men) of the day of Meeting -- The day when they come forth. Nothing concerning them remains hidden from Allah. To whom belongs the kingdom this day? To Allah, the One, the Subduer (of all). This day every soul is rewarded what it has earned. No injustice this day! Surely Allah is Swift in Reckoning. And warn them of the day that draws near, when hearts, grieving inwardly, rise up to the throats. The iniquitous will have no friend, nor any intercessor who should be obeyed."

"And the day when the enemies of Allah are gathered to the Fire, they will be formed into groups. Until, when they come to it, their ears and their eyes and their skins will bear witness against them as to what they did. And they will say to their skins Why bear ye witness against us They will say: Allah Who makes everything speak has made us speak, and He created you at first, and to Him you are returned. And you did not cover yourselves lest your ears and your eyes and your skins should bear witness against you, but you thought that Allah knew not much of what you did. And that, your (evil) thought which you entertained about your Lord, ruined you, so have you become of the lost ones. Then if they are patient, the Fire is their abode. And if they ask for goodwill, they are not of those who are granted goodwill. And We have appointed for them comrades, so they make fair-seeming to them what is before them and what is behind them, and the word proved true against them among the nations of jinn and men that have passed away before them they are surely losers."

"So We shall certainly make those who disbelieve taste a severe chastisement, and We shall certainly requite them for the worst of what they did. That is the reward of Allah's enemies -- the Fire. For them therein is the home to abide. A requital for their denying Our messages. And those who disbelieve will say: Our Lord, show us those who led us astray from among the jinn and the men that we may trample them under our feet, so that they may be of the lowest. Those who say, Our Lord is Allah, then continue in the right way, the angels descend upon them, saying: Fear not, nor be grieved, and receive good news of the Garden which you were promised. We are your friends in this world's life and in the Hereafter, and you have therein what your souls desire and you have therein what you ask for. A welcome gift from the Forgiving, the Merciful."

"Whoso desires the tilth (fields) of the Hereafter, We give him increase in his tilth and whoso desires the tilth of this world, We give him thereof and he has no portion in the Hereafter. Or have they associates who have prescribed for them any religion that Allah does not sanction? And were it not for the word of judgment, it would have been decided between them. And surely for the wrongdoers is a painful chastisement. Thou seest the unjust fearing on account of what they have earned, and it must befall them. And those who believe and do good are in the meadows of the Gardens -- they have what they please with their Lord. That is the great grace."

"And he whom Allah leaves in error, has no friend after Him. And thou wilt see the iniquitous, when they see the chastisement, saying Is there any way of return? And thou wilt see them brought before it, humbling themselves because of abasement, looking with a faint glance. And those who believe will say: Surely the losers are they who lose themselves and their followers on the Resurrection day. Now surely the iniquitous are in lasting chastisement. And they will have no friends to help them besides Allah. And he whom Allah leaves in error cannot find a way. Hearken to your Lord before there comes from Allah the day which there is no averting. You will have no refuge on that day, nor will it be yours to make a denial."

"He will say: Enter into the Fire among the nations that have passed away before you from among the jinn and men. Every time a nation enters, it curses its sister until when they all follow one another into it, the last of them will say with regard to the first of them: Our Lord, these led us astray, so give them a double chastisement of the Fire. He will say: Each one has double but you know not. And the first of them will say to the last of them: You have no preference over us, so taste the chastisement for what you earned."

"He it is Who makes you travel by land and sea; until, when you are in the ships, and they sail on with them in a pleasant breeze, and they rejoice at it, a violent wind overtakes them and the billows surge in on them from all sides, and they deem that they are encompassed about. Then they pray to Allah, being sincere to Him in obedience: If Thou deliver us from this, we will certainly be of the grateful ones. But when He delivers them, lo! they are unjustly rebellious in the earth. O men, your rebellion is against yourselves a provision (only) of this world's life. Then to Us is your return, so We shall inform you of what you did. The likeness of this world's life is only as water which We send down from the clouds, then the herbage of the earth, of which men and cattle eat, grows luxuriantly thereby; until when the earth puts on its golden raiment and it becomes adorned, and its people think that they are masters of it, Our command comes to it, by night or by day, so We render it as reaped seed-produce, as though it had not flourished yesterday. Thus do We make clear the messages for a people who reflect. And Allah invites to the abode of peace, and guides whom He pleases to the right path. For those who do good is good (reward) and more (than this). Neither blackness nor ignominy will cover their faces. These are the owners of the Garden; therein they will abide. And those who earn evil, the punishment of an evil is the like thereof, and abasement will cover them they will have none to protect them from Allah -- as if their faces had been covered with slices of the dense darkness of night. These are the companions of the Fire; therein they will abide. And on the day when We gather them all together, then We shall say to those who associated others (with Allah): Keep where you are, you and your associate-gods. Then We shall separate them one from another, and their associates will say: It was not us that you served. So Allah suffices as a witness between us and you that we were quite unaware of your serving (us). There will every soul become acquainted with what it sent before, and they will be brought back to Allah, their true Patron, and that which they devised will escape from them."

"Until when death overtakes one of them, he says: My Lord, send toe back, That I may do good in that which I have left. By no means! It is but a word that he speaks. And before them is a barrier, until the day they are raised. So when the trumpet is blown, there will be no ties of relationship among them that day, nor will they ask of one another. Then those whose good deeds are heavy, those are the successful. And those whose good deeds are light, those are they who have lost their souls, abiding in hell. The Fire will scorch their faces, and they therein will be in severe affliction. Were not My messages recited to you, but you used to reject them? They will say: Our Lord, our adversity overcame us, and we were an erring people. Our Lord, take us out of it; then if we return (to evil), we shall be unjust. He will say: Begone therein, and speak not to Me."

"And he who says to his parents: Fie on you! Do you threaten me that I shall be brought forth, when generations have passed away before me? And they both call for Allah's aid Woe to thee! Believe; surely the promise of Allah is true. But he says This is nothing but stories of the ancients. These are they against whom the word proves true, among nations of the jinn and the men that have passed away before them. Surely they are losers. And for all are degrees according to what they do, and that He may pay them for their deeds and they will not be wronged. And on the day when those who disbelieve are brought before the Fire: You did away with your good things in your life of the world and you enjoyed them; so this day you are rewarded with the chastisement of abasement because you were unjustly proud in the land and because you transgressed."

"They shall have a bed of hell and over them coverings (of it). And thus do We requite the wrongdoers. And as for those who believe and do good -- We impose not on any soul a duty beyond its scope -- they are the owners of the Garden; therein they abide. And We shall remove whatever of ill-feeling is in their hearts -- rivers flow beneath them. And they say: All praise is due to Allah, Who guided us to this! And we would not have found the way if Allah had not guided us. Certainly the messengers of our Lord brought the truth. And it will be cried out to them: This is the Garden which you are made to inherit for what you did. And the owners of the Garden call out to the companions of the Fire: We have found that which our Lord promised us to be true; have you, too, found that which your Lord promised to be true? They will say: Yes. Then a crier will cry out among them: The curse of Allah is on the wrongdoers, Who hinder (men) from Allah's way and seek to make it crooked, and they are disbelievers in the Hereafter. And between them is a veil. And on the Elevated Places are men who know all by their marks. And they call out to the owners of the Garden: Peace be to you! They have not yet entered it, though they hope. And when their eyes are turned towards the companions of the Fire, they say: Our Lord, place us not with the unjust people. And the owners of the Elevated Places call out to men whom they recognize by their marks, saying: Of no avail were to you your amassing and your arrogance. Are these they about whom you swore that Allah would not bestow mercy on them? Enter the Garden; you have no fear, nor shall you grieve. And the companions of the Fire call out to the owners of the Garden: Pour on us some water or some of that which Allah has provided for you. They say: Surely Allah has forbidden them both to the disbelievers, Who take their religion for an idle sport and a play, and this world's life deceives them. So this day We shall forsake them, as they neglected the meeting of this day of theirs, and as they denied Our messages. And certainly We have brought them a Book which We make clear with knowledge, a guidance and a mercy for a people who believe. Do they wait for aught but its final sequel? On the day when its final sequel comes, those who neglected it before will say: Indeed the messengers of our Lord brought the truth. Are there any intercessors on our behalf so that they should intercede for us? Or could we be sent back so that we should do (deeds) other than those which we did? Indeed they have lost their souls, and that which they forged has failed them."

"Those who expect not the meeting with Us, and are pleased with this world's life and are satisfied with it, and those who are heedless of Our communications -- These, their abode is the Fire because of what they earned. Those who believe and do good, their Lord guides them by their faith; rivers will flow beneath them in Gardens of bliss. Their cry therein will be, Glory to Thee, O Allah and their greeting, Peace! And the last of their cry will be Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the worlds! And if Allah were to hasten for men the (consequences of) evil, as they would hasten on the good, their doom would certainly have been decreed for them. But We leave those alone, who have no hope of meeting with Us, in their inordinacy, blindly wandering on."

"I still agree with [what I wrote]. Ultimately, the world will be safe only when all the nuclear states follow South Africa’s example and dismantle their nuclear weapons."

"Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, or miscalculation, or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us."

"One of the possible causes of human extinction will most likely involve the functioning of the ozone layer [...] Many people appear to forget that we are a part of nature and that we are animals, not machines. We require habitat, and because we are large animals, our biological requirements are quite different than small mammals such as mice. Large animals tend to live longer and are therefore subject to far more issues such as disease. Disease often begins with exposure to certain chemicals, toxins, or other animals which harbor viruses or other microbial infections. The current coronavirus pandemic makes it clear just how precarious our existence really is. Nobody is guaranteed tomorrow."

"We applaud those nations that have already signed and ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and we urge all others to follow their lead. It offers a pathway forward at a time of alarming crisis. Disarmament is not a pipe dream, but an urgent humanitarian necessity."

"The belief of some governments that nuclear weapons are a legitimate and essential source of security is not only misguided, but also dangerous, for it incites proliferation and undermines disarmament. All nations should reject these weapons completely — before they are ever used again. This is a time of great global tension, when fiery rhetoric could all too easily lead us, inexorably, to unspeakable horror. The specter of nuclear conflict looms large once more. If ever there were a moment for nations to declare their unequivocal opposition to nuclear weapons, that moment is now."

"The unacceptability of the Doomsday Machine raises awkward, unpleasant, and complicated questions that must be considered by both policy maker and technician. If it is not acceptable to risk the lives of the three billion inhabitants of the earth in order to protect ourselves from surprise attack, then how many people would we be willing to risk?"

"The future of mankind is going to be decided within the next two generations, and there are two absolute requisites: We must aim at a stable-state society [with limited population growth] and the destruction of nuclear stockpiles. … Otherwise I don't see how we can survive much later than 2050."

"I regard the employment of the atom bomb for the wholesale destruction of men, women and children as the most diabolical use of science."

"Anyone who thinks we can continue to have world wars but make them nice polite affairs by outlawing this weapon or that should meditate upon the outlawing of the cross-bow by Papal authority. Setting up the machinery for international law and order must surely precede disarmament. The Wild West did not abandon its shooting irons till after sheriffs and courts were established."

"Climate change is the defining issue of our time – and we are at a defining moment. We face a direct existential threat."

"The modernization and expansion of nuclear arsenals in multiple countries, combined with the lack of diplomatic efforts to reduce nuclear risks, have increased the likelihood of catastrophe. Development of hypersonic glide vehicles, ballistic missile defenses, and weapons-delivery systems that can use conventional or nuclear warheads raise the probability of miscalculation during a crisis. By our estimation, the potential for the world to stumble into nuclear war—an ever-present danger over the last 75 years—increased in 2020."

"As long as weapons of mass destruction exist, primarily nuclear weapons, the danger is colossal. All nations should declare... that nuclear weapons must be destroyed. This is to save ourselves and our planet."

"The use of the atomic bomb with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul."

"Humans got here in an ecological context surrounded by uncountable and unknowable interdependencies. It’s enormously risky to let our ecological ignorance suggest that we don’t need what we don’t understand—especially when we have ZERO evidence that humans can survive in a world depleted of its biodiversity. I get angry thinking about people who blithely make such a counterfactual and irreversibly devastating assumption. Nor should we imagine ourselves as being able to survive the sixth mass extinction we have initiated. Animals higher on the food chain have a harder time in such epochs. Humans are voracious (big brains to feed and a lot of un-furry surface area to keep warm), and therefore are ecologically expensive. If the Earth tightens its belt, don’t assume that humans will fare well. We are summer children borne of “good” times, where “good” translates to “biodiverse.” Cleverness is no guarantee against starvation, as countless clever humans who have starved can’t tell [us]."

"The American, English and French newspapers are spewing out elegant dissertations on the atomic bomb. We can sum it up in a single phrase: mechanized civilization has just achieved the last degree of savagery."

"We have men of science, too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner."

"As previous work has pointed out, the nuking of a sufficiently large city would be enough to generate a global-scale nuclear autumn. Take Los Angeles, for example, a city that extends for 500 square miles. The explosion and resulting fires would send an estimated 5.5 million tons of ash and soot into the stratosphere, causing sunlight, temperatures, and rainfall to temporarily decrease around the world. Globally, this would result in diminished growing seasons for the next half-decade, and temperatures would be the lowest in a thousand years. In some parts of the world, rainfall would be down by as much as 80 percent. But unlike this earlier work, which focused on relatively small, 15-kiloton nukes exploding over cities, the new study looked at whether today’s more powerful weapons could trigger nuclear autumn all on their own. They can. Liska and his colleagues found that the US, Russia, and China all have weapons that could trigger a nuclear autumn through the detonation of fewer than five bombs."

"A war with Russia or China would risk escalating into World War III. As Andrew Weiss told the Times on Ukraine, Russia and China would have conventional “escalation dominance,” as well as simply more at stake in wars on their own borders than the United States does. So what would the United States do if it were losing a major war with Russia or China? U.S. nuclear weapons policy has always kept a “first strike” option open in case of precisely this scenario. 'The current U.S. $1.7 trillion plan for a whole range of new nuclear weapons therefore seems to be a response to the reality that the United States cannot expect to defeat Russia and China in conventional wars on their own borders... there can be no winner in a war that kills everybody. Any use of nuclear weapons would quickly trigger a massive use of them by one side or the other, and the war would soon be over for all of us."

"Right now we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale, our greatest threat in thousands of years: climate change. If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon."

"There are clear and predictable consequences for the world if human beings continue to rape the earth and plunder its resources; to exploit, oppress, and dominate the weak and the poor for the sake of greed and the hunger for power; to depend on ever-rising levels of violence and ever more lethal instruments of death and destruction in order to secure positions of power and privilege."

"Today the atomic bomb has altered profoundly the nature of the world as we know it, and the human race consequently finds itself in a new habitat to which it must adapt its thinking."

"I grew up in the 1980s in the UK, and we had the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, all that. People were very, very aware. When I was 13, me and my friends, we were convinced we would die in a nuclear holocaust… What I remember from the '80s is that the fear of nuclear war had receded in favor of fear of environmental destruction. It was almost like we couldn't sustain the fear of it for that long. We have a complicated relationship with our fear. And yes, Putin has been using that doomsday threat and that fear to saber-rattle. It's extremely unnerving."

"Nuclear proliferation is on the rise. Equipment, material and training were once largely inaccessible. Today, however, there is a sophisticated worldwide network that can deliver systems for producing material usable in weapons. The demand clearly exists: countries remain interested in the illicit acquisition of weapons of mass destruction. If we sit idly by, this trend will continue. Countries that perceive themselves to be vulnerable can be expected to try to redress that vulnerability — and in some cases they will pursue clandestine weapons programs. The supply network will grow, making it easier to acquire nuclear weapon expertise and materials. Eventually, inevitably, terrorists will gain access to such materials and technology, if not actual weapons. If the world does not change course, we risk self-destruction."

"The flame from the angel's sword in the Garden of Eden has been catalyzed into the atom bomb; God's thunderbolt became blunted, so Man's dunderbolt [sic] has become the Steel Star of Destruction."

"Despite nuclear abolition being the long-awaited wish of all A-Bomb survivors, there are still more than 13,000 nuclear weapons in the world, with nuclear states continuing to modernize their nuclear forces. Moreover, nuclear disarmament continues to stagnate, further exacerbating global tensions."

"Every thinking person fears nuclear war and every technological nation plans for it. Everyone knows it's madness, and every country has an excuse."

"Imagine a room awash in gasoline, and there are two implacable enemies in that room. One of them has nine thousand matches. The other has seven thousand matches. Each of them is concerned about who's ahead, who's stronger. Well that's the kind of situation we are actually in. The amount of weapons that are available to the United States and the Soviet Union are so bloated, so grossly in excess of what's needed to dissuade the other, that if it weren't so tragic, it would be laughable. What is necessary is to reduce the matches and to clean up the gasoline."

"Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."

"To recognize one’s own insanity, is of course, the arising of sanity, the beginning of healing and transcendence."

"The problem of the twenty-first century, then, is the problem of the color-blind. This problem is simple: it believes that to redress racism, we need to not consider race in social practice, notably in the sphere of governmental action. The state, we are told, must be above race. ... We are led to believe that racism is prejudicial behavior of one party against another rather than the coagulation of socioeconomic injustice against groups. If the state acts without prejudice (this is, if it acts equally), then that is proof of the end of racism. Unequal socioeconomic conditions of today, based as they are on racisms of the past and of the present, are thereby rendered untouchable by the state. Color-blind justice privatizes inequality and racism, and it removes itself from the project of redistributive and anti-racist justice. This is the genteel racism of our new millennium."

"Now our struggle is for genuine equality, which means economic equality. For we know now, that it isn't enough to integrate lunch counters. What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn't have enough money to buy a hamburger?"

"American families are in the process of passing along a $9 trillion legacy from one generation to the next. ... Hand in hand with this money, I submit, what is really being handed down from generation to generation is the profound legacy of reproducing racial inequality. The legacy is difficult to discern because the language of family heritage hides it from our political consciousness."

"If ... the tax scheme allows enormous intergenerational wealth transfers within families, some families will maintain considerable socioeconomic advantages over others, which allows them to provide better educations and better environments (both residential and familial) for their children, and their children's children. ... Even in a constitutional democracy in which each citizen has a publicly recognized claim to all the basic political and civil liberties, these socioeconomic inequalities would create an informal social hierarchy by birth: some would be born into great wealth and other social and political advantages while others would be born into poverty and its associated disadvantages. ... If, because a social scheme had the characteristics described above, the life prospects of some children were vastly inferior to those of others, it would be reasonable to regard these disadvantaged children as members of the lowest stratum in a descent-based social hierarchy. When such a hierarchy is, and has long been, marked by racial distinctions, equal citizenship, in any meaningful sense, does not obtain. In a society with an established democratic tradition, such a quasi-feudal order does not warrant the allegiance of its most disadvantaged members, especially when these persons are racially stigmatized. Indeed, the existence of such an order creates the suspicion that, despite the society's ostensible commitment to equal civil rights, white supremacy has simply taken a new form."

"This idea of a post-racial society was quite possibly the most sophisticated racist idea ever created. Because unlike previous racist ideas, that specifically told us how we should think about particular people of color, or how we should think about this particular racial group. What post-racial ideas did was it said to us racism doesn't exist, racist policy doesn't exist, in the face of all of these racial inequities. And so then it caused us to say, OK, this inequity, like, the black unemployment rate being twice as high as the white unemployment rate, it can't exist because of racism. It must exist because there's something wrong with black workers."

"In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So we don’t. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color “criminals” and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination—employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service—are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it."

"The universal body of the human without a race is already de facto occupied by the unmarked white body in narratives of transcendence like American “post-racial” discourse."