James Gleick Quotes

Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.

One can only forget about time by making use of it.

It is not true that people who accomplish things don't waste time and that people who waste time don't accomplish things. The very concept is ill-informed. You can't waste time and you can't save time; you can only choose what you do at any given moment.

I'm a person that thinks time is very precious and our only commodity... It's so upsetting when I feel like something has wasted my time.

I have too many friends who tell me that they spend the first hour of every morning going through their e-mail messages. I'd like to use my time more carefully.

Time is an illusion. Time only exists when we think about the past and the future. Time doesn't exist in the present here and now.

Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.

We must use time as a tool, not as a couch.

Time perception is very much about how you sequence your activities, how many activities you layer overtop of others, and the types of gaps, if any, you leave in between activities.

You can't waste time and you can't save time; you can only choose what you do at any given moment.

Modern man thinks he loses something - time - when he does not do things quickly. Yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains, except kill it.

The common man is not concerned about the passage of time, the man of talent is driven by it.

Time is a slippery thing: lose hold of it once, and its string might sail out of your hands forever.

We think very little of time present; we anticipate the future, as being too slow, and with a view to hasten it onward, we recall the past to stay it as too swiftly gone. We are so thoughtless, that we thus wander through the hours which are not here, regardless only of the moment that is actually our own.

Time is a fluid condition which has no existence except in the momentary avatars of individual people. There is no such thing as was - only is.

He possessed the rare merit of making a property of his time and not a burden.

We must improve our time; time goes with rapid foot.

You would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable. You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons. Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing.

There is nothing of which we are apt to be so lavish as of time, and about which we ought to be more solicitous; since without it we can do nothing in this world.

Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.

CLOCK, n. A machine of great moral value to man, allaying his concern for the future by reminding him what a lot of time remains to him.

The day is of infinite length for him who knows how to appreciate and use it.

One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time.

What is time? If I am not asked, I know; if I am asked, I don't.

The main problem with this great obsession for saving time is very simple: you can't save time. You can only spend it. But you can spend it wisely or foolishly.