Great Throughts Treasury

"The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow." - William Osler, fully Sir William Osler

"Today let me live well; none knows what it may be tomorrow." - Palladas NULL

"Can a man control his future? Yes. Despite the system they live under, men everywhere have, I believe, more power over the future than ever before. The important thing is that we must choose to exercise it. What we do today determines how the world shall go, for tomorrow is made up of the sum total of today's experiences... Far from feeling hopeless or helpless, we must seize every opportunity, however small, to help the world around us toward peace, productivity and human brotherhood." - Bons (Leonidovich) Pasternak

"I ask you, what is human life? Is it not a maimed happiness - care and weariness, weariness and care, with the baseless expectation, the strange cozenage of a brighter tomorrow?" -

"Experience suggests that the first rule of politics is never to say never. The ingenious human capacity for maneuver and compromise may make acceptable tomorrow what seems outrageous or impossible today." - William V. Shannon, fully William Vincent Shannon

"The old stereotype of schooling that assumed that you "mastered a subject" is now obsolete. You can, hypothetically, lean all of the physics up until yesterday and will be lagging by tomorrow. Today we must conceive of the educated person, almost exclusively, as the one who comes out of school eager and able to go on to teaching himself." -

"I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve, and I serve it in all lucidity." - Igor Feodorovitch Stravinsky, or Fyodorovich

"The excitement of tomorrow's science will be in the discovery of the amino acids' memory storage capacities." - Tauri NULL

"Hope ever tells us tomorrow will be better." - Albius Tibullus

"Intoxicated with the power to manipulate nature, some misguided men have produced a rationale to replace the Myth of Superabundance. It might be called the Myth of Scientific Supremacy, for it rests on the rationalization that the scientists can fix everything tomorrow." - Stewart Udall, Fully Stewart Lee Udall

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." -

"I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today." - William Allen White

"Today’s action becomes tomorrow’s habit." - Michael E. Angier

"The greatest challenge for democracy is to persuade people not to eat the seed corn of tomorrow's harvest." - Clement Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, fully Clement Richard Attlee

"We walk into tomorrow on the lives of our youth." - Martha Berry, fully Martha McChesney Bery

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

"If the Day of Judgment came tomorrow, and God asked us what we had made of His revelation, of His grace and our freedom… we would be hard put to it to explain the advantages of a machine civilization whose highest efficiency is used for murder and slavery." - R. L. Bruckberger, fully Raymond Léopold Bruckberger

"Life lived for tomorrow will always be just a day away from being realized." - Leo Busacaglia

"When asked what are the desirable qualifications for any young person who wishes to become a politician, Churchill replied: It is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen." - Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill

"One’s true happiness depends more upon one’s own judgment of one’s self, or a consciousness of rectitude in action and intention, and the approbation of those few, who judge impartially, than upon the applause of the unthinking, undiscerning multitude, who are apt to cry Hosanna today, and tomorrow, Crucify him." - Benjamin Franklin

"Tomorrow, every Fault is to be amended; but that Tomorrow never comes." - Benjamin Franklin

"The trouble with military rule is that every colonel or general is soon full of ambition. The navy takes over today and the army tomorrow." - Yakuba Gowon, fully General Yakubu "Jack" Dan-Yumma Gowon

"Life is a journey, not a destination, and happiness is not “there” but here; not tomorrow, but today." - Sidney Greenberg

"Life is short, should hope be more? IN the moment of our talking, envious time has ebb’d away. Seize the present, trust tomorrow e’en as little as you may." -

"Seize the day, put no trust in tomorrow." -

"He will through life be master of himself and a happy man who from day to day can have said, “I have lived”: tomorrow the Father may fill the sky with black clouds or with cloudless sunshine." -

"Yesterday is ashes; tomorrow is wood. Only today does the fire burn brightly." - Inuit Sayings

"Many live in dread of what is coming. Why should we? The unknown puts adventure into life. It gives us something to sharpen our souls on. The unexpected around the corner gives a sense of anticipation and surprise. Thank God for the unknown future. If we saw all good things which are coming to us, we would sit down and denigrate. If we saw all the evil things, we would be paralyzed. How merciful is God is to lift the curtain on today; and as we get strength today to meet tomorrow, then to lift the curtain on the morrow. He is a considerate God." - E. Stanley Jones, fully Eli Stanley Jones

"You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today." - Abraham Lincoln

"We are in the grip of a scientific materialism, caught in a vicious cycle where our security today seems to depend on regimentation and weapons which will ruin us tomorrow… the intellectual achievements of great scientists are being perverted by the material exploitation of industry and war…I have lived to experience the early results of scientific materialism… have watched pride of workmanship leave and human character decline as efficiency of production lines increased… I have seen the science I worshipped and the aircraft I loved destroying the civilization I expected them to save." -

"What does your anxiety do? It does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; but oh! It empties today of its strength." -

"Education is your passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today." -

"What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow. Our life is a creation of our mind." -

"Bad habits are easier to abandon today than tomorrow." - Yiddish Proverbs

"If you wait for tomorrow, tomorrow comes. If you don’t wait for tomorrow, tomorrow comes." - Malinké Proverbs

"Tomorrow is now." - Eleanor Roosevelt, fully Anna Eleanor Roosevelt

"Friendship of a kind that cannot easily be reversed tomorrow must have roots in common interests and shared beliefs." - Barbara Tuchman

"The future is a concept - it doesn't exist! There is no such thing as tomorrow! There never will be because time is always now. That's one of the things we discover when we stop talking to ourselves and stop thinking. We find there is only present, only an eternal now." -

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes in to us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands and hopes we've learnt something from yesterday." -

"I naturally believe there will be a future, but I do not waste my time imagining its radiant beauty… It seems tome that we ought to think first about the present. Even if the present is desperately dark, I do not wish to leave it. Will tomorrow be free from darkness? We’ll talk about that tomorrow." - Lu Xun, or Lu Hsün, pen name of Zhou Shuren

"In the beginning was God, today was God, tomorrow will be God. Who can make an image of God? He has no body. He is as a work which comes out of your mouth. That word! It is no more, it is past, and still it lives! So is God." - Pygmy Prayer NULL

"The person you are tomorrow depends on the person you live like today. What kind of person do you want to be tomorrow? Are you living to be that person?" - Fred D. Anderson

"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity. It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow." - Melodie Beattie

"Life lived for tomorrow will always be just a day away from being realized." -

"Many people live as if life were a dress rehearsal for some later date. It isn't. In fact, no one has a guarantee that he or she will be here tomorrow. Now is the only time we have, and the only time that we have any control over. When our attention is in the present moment, we push fear from our minds." - Richard Carlson

"You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world's happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime." -

"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning." - Albert Einstein

"He who has got rid of the disease "Tomorrow" has the possibility to attain what he is here for." -

"Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn! Look to this Day! For it is Life, the very Life of Life. In its brief course lie all the Verities and Realities of your Existence. The Bliss of Growth, The Glory of Action, The Splendor of Beauty; For Yesterday is but a Dream, And To-morrow is only a Vision; But To-day well lived makes Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness, And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope. Look well therefore to this Day! Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!" - Kālidāsa NULL

"Leave nothing for tomorrow which can be done today." - Abraham Lincoln