This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Eckhart Tolle, born Ulrich Leonard Tolle
What the future holds for you depends on your state of consciousness now.
Consciousness | Future |
Susan Cullen-Ward, born Susan Barbara Zogu, formerly Williams, née Susan Cullen-Ward
If a man has lived in a tradition which tells him that nothing can be done about his human condition, to believe that progress is possible may be the greatest revolution of all.
Man | Nothing | Progress | Revolution | Tradition |
Stephen Vizinczey, born István Vizinczey
Our whole civilization is based on a hypothetical future and the idiocy of fortune-telling.
Civilization | Fortune | Future |
Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
Do you believe in a future life? Asked Pierre… If I see, and see clearly, the ladder rising from plant to man, why should I suppose that it breaks off with me, and does not lead further and further? I feel not only that I cannot perish, since nothing in the universe is annihilated, but that I always shall exist and always have existed.
Depression boils down to one of two things: either dwelling excessively on the past or fantasizing excessively about the future. They have no present. Living in the past or living in the future produces a spiritual and emotional numbness to the present. And a depressed person chooses that numbness over facing the pain of the present.
Depression | Future | Pain | Past | Present |
Bill Bradley, fully William Warren "Bill" Bradley
What is life worth if we don’t strive to build something that is bigger than we are and lasts longer than we do? For too long, we’ve not worried about future generations or met our obligations to each other. Instead, we have lived for ourselves, and for today. Such a world is simply not sustainable.
Imagine your life is a painting in progress and you are the artist. Each new moment, a blank space on your canvas. The ones painted are your past. Each new moment, another brush stroke, created from your hand, moved by spirit, mind, heart and soul. Strive to make your painting a "masterpiece," and alas - when it is finished, Life will proclaim, "Ahh yes ... well done!"
Heart | Life | Life | Mind | Past | Progress | Soul | Space | Spirit | Will |
It is our fear of the future that distorts the now that could lead to a different future if we dared to be whole in the present.
He searches all around for his thought. But what thought? It is either passionate, or hateful, or confused. What about the past, future or present? What is past that is extinct, what is future that has not yet arrived, and the present has no stability. For thought, Kasyapa, cannot be apprehended, inside, or outside, or in between both. For thought is immaterial, invisible, nonresisting, inconceivable, unsupported, and homeless. Thought has never been seen by any of the Buddhas, nor do they see it, nor will they see it. And what the Buddhas never see, how can that be an observable process, except in the sense that dharmas proceed by the way of mistaken perception? Thought is like a magical illusion; by an imagination of what is actually unreal it takes hold of a manifold variety of rebirths. A thought is like the stream of a river, without any staying power; as soon as it is produced it breaks up and disappears. A thought is like a flame of a lamp, and it proceeds through causes and conditions. A thought is like lightning, it breaks up in a moment and does not stay on... Can thought review thought? No, thought cannot review thought. As the blade of a sword cannot cut itself, so a thought cannot see itself. Moreover, vexed and pressed hard on all sides, thought proceeds, without any staying power, like a monkey or like the wind. It ranges far, bodiless, easily changing, agitated by the objects of sense, with the six sense-fields for its sphere, connected with one thing after another. The stability of thought, its one-pointedness, its immobility, its undistraughtness, its one-pointed calm, its nondistraction, that is on the other hand called mindfulness as to thought.
Future | Illusion | Imagination | Mindfulness | Past | Perception | Power | Present | Sense | Thought | Will | Thought |
It seems to be a constant throughout history: In every period, people believed things that were just ridiculous, and believed them so strongly that you would have gotten in terrible trouble for saying otherwise. Is our time any different? To anyone who has read any amount of history, the answer is almost certainly no. It would be a remarkable coincidence if ours were the first era to get everything just right. It's tantalizing to think we believe things that people in the future will find ridiculous. What would someone coming back to visit us in a time machine have to be careful not to say?
Coincidence | Era | Future | History | People | Right | Time | Will | Trouble | Think |
The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
Distinction | Future | Illusion | Past | Present |