Future

"There are two futures, the future of desire and the future of fate, and man's reason has never learnt to separate them. Desire, the strongest thing in the world, is itself all future, and it is not for nothing that in all the religions the motive is always forwards to an endless futurity of bliss or annihilation. Now that religion gives place to science the paradisical future of the soul fades before the Utopian future of the species, and still the future rules. But always there is, on the other side, destiny, that which inevitably will happen, a future here concerned not as the other was with man and his desires, but blindly and inexorably with the whole universe of space and time. The Buddhist seeks to escape from the Wheel of Life and Death, the Christian passes through them in the faith of another world to come, the modern reformer, as unrealistic but less imaginative, demands his chosen future in this world of men. Can we in any better way reconcile desire and fate?"

"Every choice we make allows us to manipulate the future. Do I ask Adrienne or Suzanne to the spring dance? Do I take my holiday on Corsica or on Risa? A person's life, their future, hinges on each of a thousand choices. Living is making choices. Now you ask me to believe that if I make a choice other than the one found in your history books, then your past will be irrevocably altered. Well, you know, Professor, perhaps I don't give a damn about your past, because your past is my future and as far as I'm concerned, it hasn't been written yet."

"The future, it seemed, was turning out to be one damn thing after another."

"Energies emanating from... Aquarius... will (through the effect of its potent force) stimulate... men into a new coherency, into a brotherhood of humanity which will ignore all racial and national differences and will carry the life of men forward into synthesis and unity. This means a tide of unifying life of such power that one cannot now vision it, but which—in a thousand years—will have welded all mankind into a perfect brotherhood."

"The ancient symbol for the sign Aquarius (into which our Sun is now entering) is that of the Water-carrier, the man with a pitcher of water. This passing of the Sun into the sign Aquarius is an astronomical fact... not an astrological prognostication. The great spiritual achievement and evolutionary event of that age will be the communion and human relationships established among all peoples, enabling men everywhere to sit down together... and share the bread and wine (symbols of nourishment). Preparations for that shared feast (symbolically speaking) are on their way, and those preparations are being made by the masses of men themselves, as they fight and struggle and legislate for the economic sustenance of their nations, and as the theme of food occupies the attention of legislators everywhere. This sharing, beginning on the physical plane, will prove equally true of all human relations and this will be the great gift of the Aquarian Age to humanity."

"The generation which will come into active thought expression at the end of this century... will inaugurate the framework, structure and fabric of the New Age [of Aquarius], which will start with certain premises, which today are the dream of the more exalted dreamers, and which will develop the civilisatation... This coming age will be as predominantly the age of group interplay, group idealism, and group consciousness, as the Piscean Age has been one of personality unfoldment and emphasis, personality focus, and personality consciousness. Selfishness, as we now understand it, will gradually disappear, for the will of the individual will voluntarily be blended into the group will."

"Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present."

"The problem is that no one gives much of a shit about the future until it actually happens. In the fable of the grasshopper and the ant, human beings are the most frivolous breed of grasshopper that ever was."

"Should not a true understanding of life promote care for the future along with the present? This is the immediate duty of every scientist. Until now scientists have dealt with life as finite — is it not now their mission to see life as extending into Infinity?"

"Don't tell me about the future." said Ford. "I've been all over the future. Spend half my time there. It's the same as anywhere else. Anywhen else. Whatever. Just the same old stuff in faster cars and smellier air."

"The future is mysterious. Now we’re seeing an entire generation lost to war. My hopes for the future are not personal; they’re for my people. My hopes are for peace, and only for peace."

"The future is much like the present, only longer."

"We have no right to assume that any physical laws exist, or if they have existed up until now, that they will continue to exist in a similar manner in the future."

"Whenever the rate of return on capital is significantly and durably higher than the growth rate of the economy, it is all but inevitable that inheritance (of fortunes accumulated in the past) predominates over saving (wealth accumulated in the present). ... The inequality r > g in one sense implies that the past tends to devour the future: wealth originating in the past automatically grows more rapidly, even without labor, than wealth stemming from work, which can be saved. Almost inevitably, this tends to give lasting disproportionate importance to inequalities created in the past, and therefore to inheritance."

"It is by imagining what we truly desire that we begin to go there. That is the kind of thinking about the future that seems to me most fruitful, most rewarding. I want a future in which women are not punished for having women's bodies, are not punished for desire or the lack of it, are viewed as independent protagonists in their own adventures-spiritual, intellectual, romantic, sexual, and creative adventures. That's one reason I read and write speculative fiction."

"The past is written, but the future is left for us to write, and we have powerful tools, Rios: openness, optimism, and the spirit of curiosity. All they have is secrecy, and fear, and fear is the great destroyer, Rios."

"I prefer to look on the future as something which is not written in stone. A lot of things can happen in 25 years."

"The past and future are veiled; but the past wears the widow's veil; the future, the virgin's."

"Can omniscient God, who Knows the future, find The Omnipotence to Change His future mind?"

"If we don’t care about our past we can’t have very much hope for our future."

"We did not come to fear the future. We came here to shape it."

"Don’t shortchange the future, because of fear in the present."

"Our immediate task, however, is the critical work of confronting the economic crisis. As I've said, we've passed through an era of profound irresponsibility; now we cannot afford half-measures, and we cannot go back to the kind of risk-taking that leads to bubbles that inevitably bust. So we have a choice. We can shape our future, or let events shape it for us. And if we want to succeed, we can't fall back on the stale debates and old divides that won't move us forward."

"The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future? [...] Nevertheless the past is over and it is the future that beckons to us now."

""The future," as George Soros, the financier and philanthropist once observed, "is not only unknown: it is unknowable." Given that, it seemed like a good idea to take Neil Postman’s two extremes to see how our networked future might unfold. Which kind of future—the Orwellian or the Huxleyean—seems more plausible? Postman thought that the two were mutually exclusive: humanity might have one or the other. But an even gloomier conclusion is that we might wind up with both."

"If someone who knew the future, pointed out a child to you and told you that that child would grow up totally evil, to be a ruthless dictator who would destroy millions of lives... could you then kill that child?"

"People have always had this craving to know the future. You know, the king used to hire the magician or the forecaster and he'd look in sheep guts, or something, for an answer as to handle the next war. And so there has always been a market for people who purported to know the future based on their expertise. And there's a lot of that still going on — it's just as crazy as when the king was hiring the forecaster who looked at the sheep guts. And people have an economic incentive to sell some nostrum — it can be sold over and over again."

"The future's uncertain and the end is always near ..."

"Dynamic systems studies usually are not designed to predict what will happen. Rather, they're designed to explore what would happen, if a number of driving factors unfold in a range of different ways."

"The first man—the Master—raised his goblet in a mocking toast. “To the future,” he said. “It’s on its way now, whether we’re prepared or not.”"

"The future survives because people care. Live responsibly or die."

"A great change too will come over the power side of man’s development; the whole question of government and organization will stand upon a different basis. Men will see then vividly and clearly the effect upon the astral plane of many of their actions upon the physical, and thus much that is now done thoughtlessly will become an absolute impossibility There could be no possibility of the slaughter of animals for food, for example, if only men were able to see the results upon the astral plane which that slaughter produces. The crime which men call sport would be utterly abolished if they were able to see what it is that they are really doing. It needs so slight a development to change the whole face of this which we call civilization, and to change it very much for the better. p. 345"

"What a change will come over our conceptions of art and music also for the artist of that day there will be many more colors and many more shades of color than those of which we now know, for the knowledge of the higher planes brings as one of its earliest results the power of appreciating all these different hues. The music of that day will be accompanied by color, just as the color studies will be accompanied by harmonious sound; for sound and color are simply two aspects of every ordered motion, so that a magnificent piece played upon the organ will be accompanied by a splendid display of glowing color, and thus another interest will be added to the delight of glorious music, and an additional advantage will in this way be enjoyed by the students of music and art. p. 344"

"Our religious friends argue much about heaven and hell and are terribly afraid of the latter indeed it would sometimes almost seem as though they were afraid of the former as well, from the manner in which they exert themselves to avoid going there/ In the future no questions or disputes about these conditions will be possible, because man will see for himself that there is no hell, though he will also see very clearly that those who live an evil life are by that fact storing up for themselves very undesirable results and a very unpleasant time in the astral life. The glories of the heaven world will also be open to his sight, and he will realize that man needs only a development of faculty in order to place him at once, here and now, in the midst of all the bliss that that wondrous life can give."

"As yet philosophy is the study of the very few only, and the science which has done so much for us, and has achieved so many triumphs, cannot stay the danger which threatens us. The only thing that can prevent it is the diffusion of knowledge, so that men shall understand what is really best for them and shall realize that nothing can ever be good for one which is against the interests of the whole. p. 333"

"Never was there a greater need for the diffusion of knowledge, for in the present ignorance of men there is a very real and imminent danger. We have in the immediate future the possibility of serious struggle; we have all the elements of a possible social upheaval, and we have no religion with sufficient hold upon the people to check what may develop into a wild and dangerous movement."

"Our own Theosophical Society... is striving to help humanity It has no connection with any form of politics, and it is not trying to act directly in any way with regard to social conditions, its effort is rather to dispel ignorance, to put before men the truth about life and death, to show them why they are here and what lessons they have to learn and so to bring them to understand and to realize the great truth of the brotherhood of man."

"Every day a greater number of people are beginning to understand to some extent and to strive towards a better and more rational condition of affairs. There are many societies and associations which have for their object the amelioration of the condition of humanity Some of them begin at one end and some at the other, each approaches it from his own point of view and with his own set of remedies, but at least they are striving towards that development of unselfishness which is the only true solution of all our difficulties."

"All of these difficulties arise from ignorance and selfishness. If men understood the plan of evolution, instead of working each for his own personal ends they would all join together as a community and work harmoniously for the good of all with mutual tolerance and forbearance. It is obvious that if this were done all of these evils would almost immediately cease or at any rate could very shortly be removed. p. 326"

"Then the great question of government is also in an unsatisfactorv condition; for I think all will agree that there is no country in the world which is governed, as every country in the world ought to be, solely with regard to the interests and advancement of the people who are governed. On the contrary we find everywhere personal and party considerations, and matters are in such condition that even the wisest and the best of our statesmen cannot do many things which they wish to do, and find themselves forced into many actions of which in truth they do not approve. p. 326"

"The conditions of the near future must naturally develop from those which we see today; and I think that as we look about us, unless we are terribly prejudiced, we must admit that in spite of our boasted civilization there is very much which is highly unsatisfactory. p. 324"

"The subject of the future that lies before humanity may obviously be treated in various ways; perhaps the simplest division which we can make is to speak first of the immediate future, then of the remoter future, then of the final goal. Both the immediate and the remoter future may be to some extent a matter of speculation, or perhaps we should rather say of calculation; but the final goal we know with absolute certainty, and that is the only thing which is really of importance. Still it is well that we should try to look forward a little, so that we who are units in this great mass of humanity may be able to take our part intelligently in the evolution which we see to be progressing all round us."

"We are making the future as well as bonding to survive the enormous pressures of the present, and that is what it means to be a part of history."

"Look not mournfully into the Past; it comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present; it is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future without fear and with a manly heart."

"The more you observe life in relation to yourself the more you will see the fact that you are hardly ever correct when you think about something in the future. The future exists only in imagination; and that is why, no matter how hard you try to imagine it, you will not be able to predict the future with total certainty."

"Yet this corporate being, though so insubstantial to our senses, binds, in Burke's words, a man to his country with "ties which though light as air, are as strong as links of iron." That is why young men die in battle for their country's sake and why old men plant trees they will never sit under."

"With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured."

"Two things make the future real, the artist's imagination and the worker's hope. Fascism destroys both."

"Not to the present is our hour confined, The great and shadowy future is assigned To be the glorious empire of the mind. The past was once the future, and it wrought In the high presence of on-looking thought ; All that we have, was by its efforts brought. To-day creates to-morrow, and the tree Of good or ill grows in past hours, what we Make for the future — certain is to be."

"Every feeling that looks to the future elevates human nature; for life is never so low or so little as when it concentrates itself on the present. The miserable wants, the small desires, and the petty pleasures of daily existence have nothing in common with those mighty dreams which, looking forward for action and action's reward, redeem the earth over which they walk with steps like those of an angel, beneath which spring up glorious and immortal flowers. The imagination is man's noblest and most spiritual faculty ; and that ever dwells on the to-come."