Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Tomorrow

"Do today what should be done. Your tomorrow may never come." - Harry F. Banks, real name possibly Harry Band

"Never regret yesterday. Life is in you today, and you make your tomorrow." - L. Ron Hubbard, fully Lafayette Ron Hubbard

"For most utopians, the incremental approach is far too slow and unglamorous. It lacks cataclysmic drama. They want to save the world today and send out a great press release tomorrow morning. Feeding a hungry child tonight doesn’t draw a crowd." - Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos

"The fruit we wish to pick tomorrow lies hidden in the seed of today. The goals we are to reach and the problems we are to solve tomorrow depend on today's diligence, hope and faith, today's conviction of the almightiness of good." - Ralph E. Johnson

"Freedom is in the moment of action, which is behavior. It is not related to yesterday or tomorrow." - Jiddu Krishnamurti

"Bad habits are easier to abandon today than tomorrow." - Judah Lazerov, fully Judah Leib Lazerov

"In a life well lived, each succeeding day becomes better than the last. Each day, each year, each experience does not stand alone; it cannot be separated from what has happened before or what may happen after. Yesterday determines today, and today helps determine tomorrow." - John Homer Miller

"No one can change himself beyond his life, hereafter, beyond his Time, but only within his life. His attainment of unity is something that must belong to his life, this life, that is himself; and if we can equate unity and ‘eternal life’, it is something that cannot life in some ‘tomorrow’ or ‘hereafter’ beyond a man’s life. Its possibilities belong to us now, to something we have to do now. It is this life that must be worked upon, be made more real, by separating the false by insight." - Maurice Nicoll

"The time-man in us does not know now. He is always preparing something in the future, or busy with what happened in the past... All decisions that belong to the life in time, to success, to business, comfort, are about ‘tomorrow’. All decisions about the right thing to do, about how to act, are about tomorrow. It is only what is done in now that counts, and this is a decision always about oneself and with oneself, even though its effect may touch other people’s lives ‘tomorrow’. Now is spiritual... Spiritual values have nothing to do with time." - Maurice Nicoll

"The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today's work superbly well." - William Osler, fully Sir William Osler

"Freedom means mastery of your world. Fear and greed are common sources of bondage. We are afraid, beset by anxiety. We do not know what tomorrow will bring. We seem so helpless over against the forces that move now without apparent thought for men. And our inner freedom is destroyed by greed. We think that if we only had enough goods we should be free, happy, without care. And so there comes the lust for money, and slavery to the world of things. The world can enslave; it can never make us free." - H. F. Rall, fully Harris Franklin

"Let us think only of spending the present day well. then when tomorrow shall have come, it will be called today, and then we will think about it." - John Charles Salak

"Live only for today, and you ruin tomorrow." - Charles Simmons

"Children should be surrounded with the things of nature which have their own educational value. Their minds should be allowed to stumble upon and be surprised at everything that happens in today’s life; the new tomorrow will stimulate their attention with new facts of life." -

"A land ethic for tomorrow should be as honest as Thoreau's Walden, and as comprehensive as the sensitive science of ecology. It should stress the oneness of our resources and the live-and-help-live logic of the great chain of life. If, in our haste to "progress," the economics of ecology are disregarded by citizens and policy makers alike, the result will be an ugly America." - Stewart Udall, Fully Stewart Lee Udall

"Anyone whose reward from God is deferred until tomorrow has not truly worshipped Him today." - Abu Yazid Tayfur ibn 'Isa ibn Surushan al-Bismtami

"Life is precious to the old person. He is not interested merely in thoughts of yesterday’s good life and tomorrow’s path to the grave. He does not want his later years to be a sentence of solitary confinement in society. Nor does he want them to be a death watch." - David Allman

"Tomorrow comes to us untarnished by human living. No human eyes have seen it and no one can tell what it is going to be. The Chinese word for tomorrow (mingtien) means "bright day." There is the wisdom of sages and the rapture of the poets in that image." - Brooks Atkinson, fully Justin Brooks Atkinson

"If you want to know how rich you really are, find out what would be left of you tomorrow if you should lose every dollar you own tonight." - William J. H. Boetcker, fully William John Henry Boetcker

"The way we are going to think tomorrow depends largely on what we are thinking today." - David Leslie Brown

"He who allows himself to be loved today will love tomorrow." -

"'Tis the part of a wise man to keep himself for tomorrow, and not venture all his eggs in one basket." - Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa

"If we are ever to enjoy life, now is the time - not tomorrow, nor next year, nor in some future life after we have died. The best preparation for a better life next year is a full, complete, harmonious, joyous life this year. Our beliefs in a rich future life are of little importance unless we coin them into a rich present life. Today should always be our most wonderful day." - Thomas Dreier

"One day is worth two tomorrows; never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today. What I am to be, I am now becoming." - Benjamin Franklin

"Pray as if you were to die tomorrow." - Benjamin Franklin

"Work as if you were to live 100 years; pray as if you were to die tomorrow." - Benjamin Franklin

"The power to do good is also the power to do harm; those who control the power today may not tomorrow; and, more important, what one man regards as good, another may regard as harm." - Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman

"It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow." -

"It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow." - Robert H. Goddard, fully Robert Hutchings Goddard

"The acts of today may become the precedents of tomorrow." - Farrer Herschell. 1st Baron Herschell

"Even as we speak, jealous time flees - seize this day, and put little faith in tomorrow." - Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

"Seize the present; trust the future as little as you may... or... Sieze the day, with little trust in tomorrow (Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.)" - Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

"I do not believe you can to today's job with yesterday's methods and be in business tomorrow." - Nelson Jackson, fully Horatio Nelson Jackson

"Everything begins with an idea. Your thoughts are the blueprint for your life. Your thoughts today create your world of tomorrow. Change your thoughts and you will change your world. Through the power of your thinking, you are continuously drawing kinds of events into your life. You have absolute control over your reactions." - Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla

"It is the care of a very great part of mankind to conceal their indigence from the rest. They support themselves by temporary expedients, and every day is lost in contriving for tomorrow." -

"I who am blind can give one hint to those who see - one admonition to those who would make full use of the gift of sight: Use your eyes as if tomorrow you would be stricken blind. And the same method can be applied to the other senses. Hear the music of voices, the song of a bird, the mighty strains of an orchestra, as if you would be stricken deaf tomorrow. Touch each object yhou want to touch as if tomorrow your tactile sense would fail. Smell the perfume of flowers, taste with relish each morsel, as if tomorrow you could never smell and taste again. Make the most of every sense; glory in all facets of pleasure and beauty which the world reveals to you through the several means of contact which Nature provides. But of all the senses, sight must be the most delightful." -

"There can be no progress if people have no faith in tomorrow." - John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

"Now, I say to you today my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed; -'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the people's injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. The choice today is not between violence and non-violence. It is either non-violence or non-existence...Segregation is the offspring of an illicit intercourse between injustice and immorality." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The trouble with research is that it tells you what people were thinking yesterday, not tomorrow. It’s like driving a car using a rearview mirror." - Bernard Loomis

"History is apt to judge harshly those who sacrifice tomorrow for today." - Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton

"Too late is tomorrow's life; live for today...Property given away (to friends) is the only kind that will forever be yours." - Martial, full name Marcus Valarius Martialis NULL

"Education is a persistent dream often interrupted by the nightmare of a sobering actuality. We should not be afraid to dream, for today's dream of a better world may be tomorrow's reality." - Frederick Mayer

"The church of tomorrow must be universal. It cannot belong to a particular class, race or nation, but must transcend all such barriers so the brotherhood of man may be extended among us." - Ralph S. Meadowcroft

"There was a wise man in the east whose constant prayer was that he might see today with the eyes of tomorrow." - Alfred Mercier

"Work for this world as if you will live forever - and work for the next world as if you will die tomorrow." -

"Luxury is... absolutely necessary in monarchies; as it is also in despotic states. In the former, it is the use of liberty; in the latter, it is the abuse of servitude. A slave appointed by his master to tyrannize over other wretches of the same condition, uncertain of enjoying tomorrow the blessings of today, has no other felicity that that of glutting the pride, the passions, and the voluptuousness of the present moment." - Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu

"The meaning of life is to be found in our surroundings and in our relationships... Life is meaningful when we respect the best of tradition while still loving innovation... Life is fulfilling when we marry pride with tolerance, when our deeds and our words are nourished by hope and by realism, when the wisdom of the ages catches the passionate eye of youth. Life on this earth in our time is, above all, a parade of interdependent peoples, interdependent ideas, interdependent solutions. We are all artists of the possible - and dreamers of that which is just now beyond our reach, but may not be tomorrow." - Youssou N’Dour

"On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"The load of tomorrow, added to that of yesterday, carried today, makes the strongest falter. We must learn to shut off the future as tightly as the past." - William Osler, fully Sir William Osler