Future

"Reproductive futurism presupposes the absolute and inherent good of heteronormative reproduction by limiting any discourse that would counter this claim, rendering dissent unthinkable."

"It is one of our most exciting discoveries that local discovery leads to a complex of further discoveries. Corollary to this we find that we no sooner get a problem solved than we are overwhelmed with a multiplicity of additional problems in a most beautiful payoff of heretofore unknown, previously unrecognized, and as-yet unsolved problems."

"Neither the great political and financial power structures of the world, nor the specialization-blinded professionals, nor the population in general realize... that it is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a higher standard of living than any have ever known."

"It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary and henceforth unrationalizable as mandated by survival."

"War is obsolete. It could never have been done before. Only ten years ago... technology reached the point where it could be done. Since then the invisible technological-capability revolution has made it ever easier so to do."

"It is a matter of converting the high technology from weaponry to livingry. The essence of livingry is human-life advantaging and environment controlling. With the highest aeronautical and engineering facilities of the world redirected from weaponry to livingry production, all humanity would have the option of becoming enduringly successful."

"All previous revolutions have been political—in them the have-not majority has attempted revengefully to pull down the economically advantaged minority. If realized, this historically greatest design revolution will joyously elevate all humanity to unprecedented heights."

"All of humanity is in peril of extinction if each one of us does not dare, now and henceforth, always to tell only the truth, and all the truth, and to do so promptly — right now."

"Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment. . . . Humanity is in ‘final exam’ as to whether or not it qualifies for continuance in Universe"

"The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented."

"Science, and physics in particular, has developed out of the Newtonian paradigm of mechanics. In this world view, every phenomenon we observe can be reduced to a collection of atoms or particles, whose movement is governed by the deterministic laws of nature. Everything that exists now has already existed in some different arrangement in the past, and will continue to exist so in the future. In such a philosophy, there seems to be no place for novelty or creativity"

"You'll see that, since our fate is ruled by chance, Each man, unknowing, great, Should frame life so that at some future hour Fact and his dreamings meet."

"The future is a world limited by ourselves; in it we discover only what concerns us and, sometimes, by chance, what interests those whom we love the most."

"When we try to imagine the distant future, we may of course imagine hi-tech gee-whizzery. Yet emotionally, we also think in primitive terms of dominance and submission, of hierarchy and power structures, superiority and inferiority. Even when we imagine future computers and robots, we are liable to have simple-minded fantasies about being used, dominated, and overthrown. Bug-eyed extra-terrestrials from the Planet Zog, too, and their legion of hydra-headed sci-fi cousins, are implicitly assumed to have the motivational structure of our vertebrate ancestors. Superficially they may be alien - all those tentacles - but really they're just like us. Surely they'll want to dominate us, control us, invade Earth etc?"

"My own philosophical position, if I may put it that way, is very briefly as follows:"

":(1) I think about the future, therefore I am and can be a human being;"

":(2) The future is partly knowable for man: thinking back = thinking forward;"

":(3) Anyone who ponders the future will learn that this is still open to a considerable extent that can be further determined from case to case..."

":(4) Determining one’s own destiny implies two things: ready acceptance of a stewardship for the future and of the duty to make a choice;"

":(5) Everyone must therefore be able to have access, as soon and as completely as possible, to all available data for, and possible consequences of, this choice to be made..."

":(6) For this purpose everyone, choosing in complete freedom and on his own responsibility, must be able and permitted to utilize all the philosophical and scientific thought models useful for this vital choice;"

":(7) Thought models, or models of the future, are useful insofar as they can reasonably contribute towards the optimum realization of man’s future-directed wishes and actions in a given situation or period;"

":(8) Optimum realization aims at a harmonious synthesis of effectiveness and justice in the furthest possible surveyable part of future time;"

":(9) The effectiveness to be aimed at calls for the application and refinement of all conceivable prognostic techniques for adding to knowledge of the future, including those which can be effectively developed over an ever-wider time scale..."

":(10) All objectives meet in the endlessly continued approach to and progress towards the ideal “summum bonum”, though this, the most valuable humanistic good of a full human society, may perhaps never be capable of realization in total perfection."

"I believe Mahatma Gandhi was a futurist in the best sense of the word. He foresaw trends and had the confidence to record his predictions and prescriptions in bold and stark terms. He did so, not in a stray article or opinion piece, but over a life time of speeches, writings – and living – beginning with Hind Swaraj, the remarkable he started writing in 1909 and completed in 1910."

"Futurists and common sense concur that a substantial change, worldwide, in life-style and moral guidelines will soon become an absolute necessity."

"We can chart our future clearly and wisely only when we know the path which has led to the present."

"In spite of the dominance of mechanistic thought in the contemporary world, a perplexing residue of the magical tradition still survives in the form of several issues, solutions to which do not appear possible within the context of a purely mechanical view of the world.... It is important to recognize that the materialist, scientific paradigm that dominates the late twentieth century world and provides the basis for its dominant institutions, has its basis in the life and work of Pythagoras, one of the most significant representatives of the perennial philosophy and a founder of the magical tradition. This spirit, which gave rise to our world view, is a spirit that must be recaptured if our civilization is to flourish. The choice is a clear one to many, and was summed up in a book title by the late Pythagorean and futurist Buckminster Fuller, Utopia or Oblivion."

"Futurists believe that accelerating and convulsive changes will characterize our world for decades to come. These will affect profoundly every political institution, and every religious institution in its mission to relate faith to societal changes. Those who enter the twenty first century can expect a continuation and acceleration of this trend toward permanent resolution."

"Change is the process by which the future invades our lives."

"It may seem like a paradox: while futurism, the singer of modernity, was able to perceive and intuit the power of cinema on theoretical and poetical levels, it did not manage to use the new means of expression as a weapon – nor did it appropriate cinema as the art form of all times."

"Nos duo turba sumus."

"Ludit in humanis divina potentia rebus, Et certam præsens vix habet hora fidem."

"Venator sequitur fugientia; capta relinquit; Semper et inventis ulteriora petit."

"There was the Door to which I found no key; There was the Veil through which I might not see."

"The never-ending flight Of future days."

"Education is an important element in the struggle for human rights. It is the means to help our children and our people rediscover their identity and thereby increase their self respect. Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs only to the people who prepare for it today."

"My clients are the children; my clients are the next generation. They do not know what promises and bonds I undertook when I ordered the armies of the United States to the soil of France, but I know, and I intend to redeem my pledges to the children; they shall not be sent upon a similar errand."

"It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties."

"My visions of the future are always pretty much standard issue. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer... and there are flying cars."

"You can't fuck the future. The future fucks you! It catches up with you and it fucks you if you ain't planned for it!"

"The nation is burdened with the heavy curse on those who come afterwards. The generation before us was inspired by an activism and a naive enthusiasm, which we cannot rekindle, because we confront tasks of a different kind from those which our fathers faced."

"The problem with the future is that it keeps turning into the present"

"Trust no future, howe'er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act, act in the living present! Heart within, and God o'erhead!"

"Be it even over our bleaching bones the truth will triumph! We will blaze the trail for it. It will conquer! Under all the severe blows of fate, I shall be happy as in the best days of my youth! Because, my friends, the highest human happiness is not the exploitation of the present but the preparation of the future."

"Awakening as a future event has no meaning because awakening is the realization of Presence. So the new heaven, the awakened consciousness, is not a future state to be achieved. A new heaven and a new earth are arising within you at this moment, and if they are not arising at this moment, they are no more than a thought in your head and therefore not arising at all."

"The moment your attention turns to the Now, you feel a presence, a stillness, a peace. You no longer depend on the future for fulfillment and satisfaction - you don’t look to it for salvation."

"Whereas before you dwelt in time and paid brief visits to the Now, have your dwelling place in the Now and pay brief visits to past and future."

"A state of consciousness totally free of all negativity ... is the liberated state to which all spiritual teachings point. It is the promise of salvation, not in an illusory future but right here and now."