George Herbert Mead Quotes

Time is not a line, but a series of now-points.

People have reflected on the quality of time ever since they've been writing. I suppose I have thought about and written about the question of living in the present - but it only lasts for an instant, and then everything becomes the past. The future, you know nothing about, except for some anticipations you have.

'Nowness' is a dynamic relation between the past and the future.

These tenses-past, present and future-are not the tenses of time; they are tenses of the mind. That which is no longer before the mind becomes the past. That which is before the mind is the present. And that which is going to be before the mind is the future. Past is that which is no longer before you. Future is that which is not yet before you. And present is that which is before you and is slipping out of your sight. Soon it will be past.

Time flies never to be recalled.

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.

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.

Nobody really lives in the present.

I've been bothered about time generally and our tripartite division of time into past, present, and future. I think I know what the past is, and I think I know what future is, but I'm really not comfortable with the notion of present.

Time is not an absolute reality but an aspect of our consciousness.

Calendars and clocks exist to measure time, but that signifies little because we all know that an hour can seem as eternity or pass in a flash, according to how we spend it.

I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.

The present moment, if you think about it, is the only time there is. No matter what time it is, it is always now.

Tomorrow doesn't really exist.

The now, the here, through which all future plunges into the past.

Eternity ceased gradually to serve as the measure and focus of human actions.

When I was a child, Sunday afternoons felt like they could last a week or a month. Increasingly, as I get older, time is going so, so fast.

Time sometimes passes quite quickly.

Our perception of time is really driven by our perception of the unfamiliar, vivid, and new.

I'm really freaked out by time. How, for instance, what I did last week is not real in the sense that it's happened. It's just a memory that's filed away in my brain.

She sat back on her heels and nodded. The thought experiment she proposed was certainly odd, but her point was simple. Everything in the universe was constantly changing, and nothing stays the same, and we must understand how quickly time flows by if we are to wake up and truly live our lives. That’s what it means to be a time being, old Jiko told me, and then she snapped her crooked fingers again. And just like that, you die.

Tis but a short journey across the isthmus of Now.

Time is liquid. One moment is no more important than any other and all moments quickly run away.

The experience of every past moment but belies the faith of each present.

When a day passes, it is no longer there. What remains of it? Nothing more than a story. If stories weren't told or books weren't written, man would live like the beasts, only for the day.