The voices / 18 fragments

Alvin Toffler

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01Undated

The secret message communicated to most young people today by the society around them is that they are not needed, that the society will run itself quite nicely until they - at some distant point in the future - will take over the reigns. Yet the fact is that the society is not running itself nicely... because the rest of us need all the energy, brains, imagination and talent that young people can bring to bear down on our difficulties. For society to attempt to solve its desperate problems without the full participation of even very young people is imbecile.

Alvin Toffler / quote

02Undated

Science fiction is held in low regard as a branch of literature, and perhaps it deserves this critical contempt. But if we view it as a kind of sociology of the future, rather than as literature, science fiction has immense value as a mind-stretching force for the creation of the habit of anticipation. Our children should be studying Arthur C. Clarke, William Tenn, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury and Robert Sheckley, not because these writers can tell them about rocket ships and time machines but, more important, because they can lead young minds through an imaginative exploration of the jungle of political, social, psychological, and ethical issues that will confront these children as adults.

Alvin Toffler / quote

03Undated

You’ve got to think about big things while you’re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.

Alvin Toffler / quote

04Undated

Parenthood remains the greatest single preserve of the amateur.

Alvin Toffler / quote

05Undated

To think that the new economy is over is like somebody in London in 1830 saying the entire industrial revolution is over because some textile manufacturers in Manchester went broke.

Alvin Toffler / quote

06Undated

The next major explosion is going to be when genetics and computers come together. I'm talking about an organic computer - about biological substances that can function like a semiconductor.

Alvin Toffler / quote

07Undated

You can use all the quantitative data you can get, but you still have to distrust it and use your own intelligence and judgment.

Alvin Toffler / quote

08Undated

We must search out totally new ways to anchor ourselves, for all the old roots religion, nation, community, family, or profession are now shaking under the hurricane impact of the accelerative thrust.

Alvin Toffler / quote

09Undated

Knowledge is the most democratic source of power.

Alvin Toffler / quote

10Undated

Our technological powers increase, but the side effects and potential hazards also escalate.

Alvin Toffler / quote

11Undated

Technology feeds on itself. Technology makes more technology possible.

Alvin Toffler / quote

12Undated

The great growling engine of change - technology.

Alvin Toffler / quote

13Undated

The illiterate of the future will not be the person who cannot read. It will be the person who does not know how to learn.

Alvin Toffler / quote

14Undated

Change is not merely necessary to life - it is life.

Alvin Toffler / quote

15Undated

Nobody knows the future with certainty. We can, however, identify ongoing patterns of change.

Alvin Toffler / quote

16Undated

Future shock is the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time.

Alvin Toffler / quote

17Undated

Man has a limited biological capacity for change. When this capacity is overwhelmed, the capacity is in future shock.

Alvin Toffler / quote

18Undated

One of the definitions of sanity is the ability to tell real from unreal. Soon we'll need a new definition.

Alvin Toffler / quote