125 Quotes About Continuity

Some care is needed in using Descartes' argument. "I think, therefore I am" says rather more than is strictly certain. It might seem as though we are quite sure of being the same person to-day as we were yesterday, and this is no doubt true in some sense. But the real Self is as hard to arrive at as the real table, and does not seem to have that absolute, convincing certainty that belongs to particular experiences.

Leaves are verbs that conjugate the seasons.

When we're in the story, when we're part of it, we can't know the outcome. It's only later that we think we can see what the story was. But do we ever really know? And does anybody else, perhaps, coming along a little later, does anybody else really care? ... History is written by the survivors, but what is that history? That's the point I was trying to make just now. We don't know what the story is when we're in it, and even after we tell it we're not sure. Because the story doesn't end.

He realized suddenly that it was one thing to see the past occupying the present, but the true test of prescience was to see the past in the future. Things persisted in not being what they seemed.

A tree can grow two hundred years, and look like it’ll last a thousand more - but when lightning strikes at last, it burns.

The professor counsels against retrospective history, assuming that particular pieces contributed to an outcome.

Durability is one of the chief elements of strength. Nothing is either loved or feared but that which is likely to endure.

The arts are the best Time Machine we have." C. S. Lewis

I have always lived in a world in which I'm just a spot in history. My life is not the important point. I'm just part of the continuum, and that continuum, to me, is a marvelous thing. The history of life, and the history of the planet, should go on and on and on and on. I cannot conceive of anything in the universe that has more meaning than that."[Sheri S. Tepper: Speaking to the Universe, Locus Magazine, September 1998]