It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum.
You can judge the quality of their faith from the way they behave. Discipline is an index to doctrine.
Now, God be praised, that to believing souls gives light in darkness, comfort in despair.
We already have many of the technologies and tools that we need to build a sustainable future. What we don't have is a new way of thinking, and that's really the hardest part.
A people do not throw their geniuses away. And if they are thrown away, it is our duty as artists and as witnesses for the future to collect them again for the sake of our children and, if necessary, bone by bone.
In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.
Of present fame think little, and of future less; the praises that we receive after we are buried, like the flowers that are strewed over our grave, may be gratifying to the living, but they are nothing to the dead.
Kids feel so strongly about what's going on today and what's happening to the world, and that's very inspiring. I feel more hopeful than ever before about the future.
I have the feeling it will influence my future writing to the extent that without any material worries I could develop a greater ease, even lightheartedness, in my writing.
The form of my poem rises out of a past that so overwhelms the present with its worth and vision that I'm at a loss to explain my delusion that there exist any real links between that past and a future worthy of it.
Seek not to know what must not be reveal, for joy only flows where fate is most concealed. A busy person would find their sorrows much more; if future fortunes were known before!
I mean, the nation in which we live - and the world in which we live - is so extraordinarily more like a future than the futures that we're being sold on the screen and on television.
I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.
I've never liked the moment of seeing something beautiful - a sunset, a moose, an elephant - and then raising a camera and trying to capture it for some future moment. That's always struck me as strange.
If you want to have sustained joy, you have to not only make sure that you think right, but you also have to make decisions now that are going to guarantee some joy in the future.
So, I guess the answer to your question is very few people can bring off a novel of the future because it's just so damn hard to make it look like the future.
Asking me why I did or didn't do anything is generally pointless. How do I know? And asking me what I'll do in the future is even less rewarding.
I think the human race doesn't have a future if we don't go into space. We need to expand our horizons beyond planet Earth if we are to have a long-term future.
Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature; for life is never so low or so little as when occupied with the present.
When I was a kid in the '50s, during the Eisenhower years, everything seemed to be working fine. I don't recall as a teenager ever worrying about the state of the future world.
We should keep in mind that it is easy to concoct stories explaining the past or to become confident about dubious scenarios of the future. We should view both explanations and prophecies with skepticism.
