Alvin Toffler

"Tomorrow's illiterate will not be the man who can't read; he will be the man who has not learned how to learn."

"Change is the process by which the future invades our lives, and it is important to look at it closely, not merely from the grand perspectives of history, but also from the vantage point of the living, breathing individuals who experience it. The acceleration of change in our time is, itself, an elemental force. This accelerative thrust has personal and psychological, as well as sociological, consequences."

"If industrialism, with its faster pace of life, has accelerated the family cycle, super-industrialism now threatens to smash it altogether."

"Change is not merely necessary to life; it is life. By the same token, life is adaptation. There are, however, limits on adaptability. When we alter our life style, when we make and break relationships with things, places or people, when we move restlessly through the organizational geography of society, when we learn new information and ideas, we adapt; we live. Yet there are finite boundaries; we are not infinitely resilient. Each orientation response, each adaptive reaction exacts a price, wearing down the body's machinery bit by minute bit, until perceptible tissue damage results. Thus man remains in the end what he started as in the beginning: a biosystem with a limited capacity for change. When this capacity is overwhelmed, the consequence is future shock."

"By instructing students how to learn, unlearn and relearn, a powerful new dimension can be added to education."

"…the sudden rise of a religious movement in the West that restricts the eating of beef and thereby saves billions of tons of grain and provides a nourishing diet for the world as a whole."

"Freedom of expression is no longer a political nicety, but a precondition for economic competitiveness."

"Wir haben die Bühne für eine vollkommen neue Gesellschaft geschaffen, und auf dieser Bühne müssen wir agieren."

"Was uns auf dem Weg ins Zeitalter des Superindustrialismus widerfährt, können wir nur verstehen, wenn wir die Beschleunigungsprozesse kennen und den Begriff der Vergänglichkeit erfassen."

""Stellen wir uns einmal vor, daß nicht nur ein Individuum, sondern eine ganze Gesellschaft, eine ganze Generation"

"Der Zukunftsschock ist eine Zeiterscheinung, ein Ergebnis der Tatsache, dass sich die Veränderungen in der Gesellschaft immer rascher vollziehen, einen immer größeren Umfang annehmen."