- “Sometimes the clouds weren’t weightless. Sometimes their bellies got dark and full. It was life. It happened. It didn’t mean it wasn’t scary, or that I wasn’t still afraid, but now I knew that as long as I was standing under it with Braden beside me when those clouds broke, I’d be alright. We’d get rained on together. Knowing Braden he’d have a big ass umbrela to shelter us from the worst of it. That there was an uncertain future I could handle.” ― Samantha Young, On Dublin Street
- “In a vision, Irie has seen a time, a time not far from now, when roots won’t matter any more because they can’t because they mustn’t because they’re too long and they’re too tortuous and they’re just buried too damn deep. She looks forward to it.” ― Zadie Smith, White Teeth
- “The golden flower blooms if you are ready to die to the past, if you are utterly in the present. And you can be utterly in the present only if you have no desire to be anywhere else in the future, if you have no desire to be somebody else. This I call enlightenment.” ― Osho, The Secret of Secrets
- “I am one of those who think, like Nobel, that humanity will draw more good than evil from new discoveries.” ― Marie Curie
- “You’re stuck in the past,’ sighed May, returning to his paper. ‘I’m not, I’m just too busy catching up to deal with the present. I’ll get to the present eventually.’ He dug his knife back into the toaster. ‘You mean you’ll get to it at some time in the future.’ ‘Yes, when I’ve finished with the past. I want to know everything before I die, and I’m running out of time.’ His knife slipped and catapulted breadcrumbs across the office.” ― Christopher Fowler, England’s Finest: Stories
- “But clouds bellied out in the sultry heat, the sky cracked open with a crimson gash, spewed flame-and the ancient forest began to smoke. By morning there was a mass of booming, fiery tongues, a hissing, crashing, howling all around, half the sky black with smoke, and the bloodied sun just barely visible. And what can little men do with their spades, ditches, and pails? The forest is no more, it was devoured by fire: stumps and ash. Perhaps illimitable fields will be plowed here one day, perhaps some new, unheard-of wheat will ripen here and men from Arkansas with shaven faces will weigh in their palms the heavy golden grain. Or perhaps a city will grow up-alive with ringing sound and motion, all stone and crystal and iron-and winged men will come here flying over seas and mountains from all ends of the world. But never again the forest, never again the blue winter silence and the golden silence of summer. And only the tellers of tales will speak in many-colored patterned words about what had been, about wolves and bears and stately green-coated century-old grandfathers, about old Russia; they will speak about all this to us who have seen it with our own eyes ten years – a hundred years! – ago, and to those others, the winged ones, who will come in a hundred years to listen and to marvel at it all as at a fairy tale. (“In Old Russia”)” ― Yevgeny Zamyatin, The Dragon: Fifteen Stories
- “We fail to take responsibility, to act productively in the interest of ourselves and others. And in our attempts at a better life, we are often severely limited or thwarted by the immature and socially inept behavior of ourselves and others. There is a great fabric of relations, behaviors and emotions, reverberating with human and animal bliss and suffering, a web of intimate and formal relations, both direct and indirect. Nasty whirlwinds of feedback cycles blow through this great multidimensional web, pulsating with hurt and degradation. My lacking human development blocks your possible human development. My lack of understanding of you, your needs perspectives, hurts you in a million subtle ways. I become a bad lover, a bad colleague, a bad fellow citizen and human being. We are interconnected: You cannot get away from my hurt and wounds. They will follow you all of your life—I will be your daughter’s abusive boyfriend, your belligerent neighbor from hell. And you will never grow wings because there will always be mean bosses, misunderstanding families and envious friends. And you will tell yourself that is how life must be. But it is not how life has to be. Once you begin to be able to see the social-psychological fabric of everyday life, it becomes increasingly apparent that the fabric is relatively easy to change, to develop. Metamodern politics aims to make everyone secure at the deepest psychological level, so that we can live authentically; a byproduct of which is a sense of meaning in life and lasting happiness; a byproduct of which is kindness and an increased ability to cooperate with others; a byproduct of which is deeper freedom and better concrete results in the lives of everyone; a byproduct of which is a society less likely to collapse into a heap of atrocities.” ― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One
- “You realize that our mistrust of the future makes it hard to give up the past.” ― Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor
- “We do not belong to the past dawns, but to the noons of the future.” ― Sri Aurobindo, Bhagavad Gita and Its Message
- “The classic flood-story allegory may be for real, and not in the past but in the near future. The coming pestilence and ruin is the flood that threatens to engulf humanity, and the arc is the rocket ship, under the leadership of the visionary.” ― Aneesh Abraham, Super Dense Crush Load: The Story of Man Redux
- “It’s amazing how a little tomorrow can make up for a whole lot of yesterday.” ― John Guare, Landscape of the Body
- We face the future with our past and our present as guarantors of our promises. Theodore Roosevelt
- “One of the most intriguing problems is to understand the precise nature of time, especially with regard to the big bang, the big crunch and the long-term future of an open universe.” ― Jamal Nazrul Islam, The Ultimate Fate Of The Universe
- “Any blunder committed in the past opens the avenue for the success of the future. However, the success of the future massively is fueled by the how positively the mistakes of the past are handled!” ― Israelmore Ayivor, Daily Drive 365
- Heal the past, live the present, dream the future. Mary Engelbreit
- “The past is our history, let’s go build a legacy.” ― Temi O’Sola
- “The present is a square. The past, accentuated and full of motif. From where we live to the technology we abide, society has regressed to a younger state. Big bright blocky colors phase out the carefully crafted lines straight. The circle is a bit further, already in nature, returning us to our lost origin.” ― Lorin Morgan-Richards
- “The life where nothing was ever unexpected. Or inconvenient. Or unusual. The life without colour, pain or past.” ― Lois Lowry, The Giver
- “You have to appreciate where you have come from to know who you are in the present and whom you would like to be in the future.” ― Truth Devour, Unrequited
- “Children are the world’s most valuable resource and its best hope for the future.” ― John F. Kennedy
- Be skeptical of approaches that don’t find it necessary to suffer today for a better tomorrow. Shane Parrish
- “No satan can unsettle what God has settled.” ― Patience Johnson, Why Does an Orderly God Allow Disorder
- “Surrendering is not giving up–it is gaining strength.” ― Grace Sara, Awakening in the 21st Century: Surviving a Spiritually Dormant Society
- “It is not as much about who you used to be, as it is about who you choose to be.” ― Sanhita Baruah
- “The past embraces the futureThe future embraces the pastThey are both intertwinedLinked in all eternity” ― Karen Hackel, The Whisper of Your Soul
- “The past is Unbelievable, when you think you figure Everything out, It leads to the future.” ― Pradip Bendkule, Blood Bonding: Protector and Secrets
- “The new world is as yetbehind the veil of destinyIn my eyes, howeverits dawn has been unveiled” ― Allama Iqbal
- “Program your life the way you want it to be: don’t waste the unuse energy that lodges in the matrix of your soul. You are transcendent, be a superintendent.” ― Michael Bassey Johnson
- Today I will do what others won’t, so tomorrow I can accomplish what others can’t. Jerry Rice
- “The future says:Dear mortals;I know you are busy with your colourful lives;I have no wish to waste the little time that remainsOn arguments and heated debates;But before I can appearPlease, close your eyes, sit stillAnd listen carefullyTo what I am about to say;I haven’t happened yet, but I will.I can’t pretend it’s going to beBusiness as usual.Things are going to change.I’m going to be unrecognisable.Please, don’t open your eyes, not yet.I’m not trying to frighten you.All I ask is that you think of meNot as a wish or a nightmare, but as a storyYou have to tell yourselves -Not with an endingIn which everyone lives happily ever after,Or a B-movie apocalypse,But maybe starting with the line’To be continued…’And see what happens next.Remember this; I am notWritten in stoneBut in time – So please don’t shrug and sayWhat can we do?It’s too late, etc, etc, etc.Dear mortals,You are such strange creaturesWith your greed and your kindness,And your hearts like broken toys;You carry fear with you everywhereLike a tiny godIn its box of shadows.You love festivals and musicAnd good food.You lie to yourselvesBecause you’re afraid of the dark.But the truth is: you are in my handsAnd I am in yours.We are in this together,Face to face and eye to eye;We’re made for each other.Now those of you who are still here;Open your eyes and tell me what you see.” ― Nick Drake