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We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.

 

Marshall McLuhan

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The march , as ever, is toward the future, and he who marches is getting there, even though he march walking backwards. And who knows if that is not the better way!...

 

Miguel de Unamuno

 

Just as mainstream literature shows us how our contemporaries view the present, and historical fiction shows us how they view the past (not, of course, what the present or the past were actually like), so speculative fiction shows us how they view the future. I happen to believe that my contemporaries' view of the past is not very important; but their view of the present is quite definitely important, and their view of the future is vital.

 

Gene Wolfe

 

The first thing necessary for a constructive dealing with time is to learn to live in the reality of the present moment. For psychologically speaking, this present moment is all we have. The past and future have meaning because they are part of the present: a past event has existence now because you are thinking of it at this present moment, or because it influences you so that you, as a living being in the present, are that much different. The future has reality because one can bring it into his mind in the present. Past was the present at one time, and the future will be the present at some coming moment. To try to live in the "when" of the future or the "then" of the past always involves an artificiality, a separating one's self from reality; for in actuality one exists in the present. The past has meaning as it lights up the present, and the future as it makes the present richer and more profound.

 

Rollo May

 

It's different now, it's different now. Now I can speak the truth. I can tell you that the one thing I really, really couldn't bear when I was an MP were my constituents. [laughter] Let's face it: the people have contempt for the politicans; it is as nothing to the contempt we have for you. [laughter] All over this country, there are politicians on their way to the Labour Party conference, coming away from the LibDem one, getting ready to go to the Conservative one, thinking "God, at last he's said it. He's said what we all feel, that happiness is the constituency in the rear-view mirror."

 

Gyles Brandreth

 

Here we must make one of those inductive applications of the law of continuity which have produced such great results in all of the positive sciences. We must extend the law of insistency into the future. Plainly, the insistency of a future idea with reference to the present is a quantity affected by the minus sign; for it is the present that affects the future, if there be any effect, not the future that affects the present.

 

Charles Sanders Peirce