Our Centers for Ethics:

Quotations: The future, fate, change, security

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No wind favors he who has no destined port.
— Michel de Montaigne, French essayist and man of letters (1553-1592)

We drive into the future using only our rear view mirror.
— (Herbert) Marshall McLuhan, Canadian educator and media philosopher (1911-1980)

The future enters into us, in order to transform us, long before it happens.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, German poet (1875-1926)

If there is anything we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.
— Carl Jung, Swiss founder of analytical psychology (1875-1961)

With our thoughts we make the world.
— Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama), Indian philosopher and founder of Buddhism (c. 563-c. 483 B.C.)

We are the people our parents warned us about.
— Jimmy Buffett, American songwriter, performer (b. 1946)

Since changes are going on anyway, the great thing is to learn enough about them so that we will be able to lay hold of them and turn them in the direction of our desires. Conditions and events are neither to be fled from nor passively acquiesced in; they are to be utilized and directed.
— John Dewey, American philosopher and education reformer (1859-1952)

Security can only be achieved through constant change, through discarding old ideas that have outlived their usefulness and adapting others to current facts.
— William O. Douglas, American jurist, Supreme Court justice (1898-1980)

The way to be safe is never to be secure.
— Benjamin Franklin, American Founding Father, inventor and statesman (1706-1790)

Security is mostly superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
— Helen Keller, American social activist, public speaker and author (1880-1968)

Security is a false god; begin making sacrifices to it and you are lost.
— Paul Bowles, American novelist (1910-1999)

The future comes one day at a time.
— Dean Acheson, American secretary of state (1893-1971)

Freedom and constraint are two aspects of the same necessity, the necessity of being the man you are and not another. You are free to be that man, but not another.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery, French aviator and author (1900-1944)

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