This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
'Change' is scientific, 'progress' is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.
Change | Controversy | Progress |
To have sinned means that you are convinced that, in some mysterious way, what you have done will bring misfortune on you in the future; that it has broken some mysterious law of harmony, and is a link in a chain of past and future discords.
Future | Harmony | Law | Means | Misfortune | Past | Will | Misfortune |
Envy ought in strict truth to have no place whatever allowed it in the heart of man; for the goods of this present world are so vile and low that they are beneath it, and those of the future world are so vast and exalted that they are above it.
Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.
Progress |
Men spend their lives in anticipations, in determining to be vastly happy at some period when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other - it is our own. Past opportunities are gone, future are not come. We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer the tasting of them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age.
How small a portion of our life it is that we really enjoy! In youth we are looking forward to things that are to come; in old age we are looking backward to things that are gone past; in manhood, although we appear indeed to be more occupied in things that are present, yet even that is too often absorbed in vague determinations to be vastly happy on some future day when we have time.
Age | Day | Future | Happy | Life | Life | Old age | Past | Present | Time | Youth | Youth | Old |
C. S. Lewis, fully Clive Staples "C.S." Lewis, called "Jack" by his family
We have trained them [men] to think of the Future as a promised land which favoured heroes attain--not as something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.
Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
Many people think that if they were only in some other place, or had some other job, they would be happy. Well, that is doubtful. So get as much happiness out of what you are doing as you can and don't put off being happy until some future date.
Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
Remember happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely upon what you think. So start each day by thinking of all the things you have to be thankful for. Your future will depend very largely on the thoughts you think today. So think thoughts of hope and confidence and love and success.
Confidence | Day | Future | Hope | Love | Success | Thinking | Will | Happiness | Think |
Dean Acheson, fully Dean Gooderham Acheson
The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.
The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy.
Enemy | Future | Hope | Inspiration | Man | Optimism | Present |