Alan Kay Quotes

What happens next is up to you.

The future is always changing. If we had no choices, there'd be no point in living.

The future is not inevitable. We can influence it, if we know what we want it to be.

The individual always realizes only one of the possibilities in its development, which could always have taken a different turning whenever it has to make an important decision.

When we get to the future, I'll determine the future.

So what it means is when you don't believe in the inevitable, it means you don't expect that that's how things have to turn out. You can change them.

We're living under the illusion that we have the power to determine what to do with it.

Free will is to mind, what chance is to matter

Circumstances are beyond the control of man; but his conduct is in his own power.

Does our hand show in this?

The future is fluid. Each act, each decision, and each development creates new possibilities and eliminates others. The future is ours to direct.

While we cannot predict the future, we will most surely live it. Every action and decision we take - or don't - ripples into the future. For the first time, we have the capability, the technology, and the knowledge to direct those ripples.

The future is unwritten.

When you make a choice, you change the future.

There's always, always a choice. My options might really, truly suck, but that doesn't mean there isn't a choice.

Knowing the future is difficult, controlling the future is impossible. Knowing today is essential; controlling today is possible.

To deal with future we have to deal with possibilities. Analysis will only tell us what is.

There is absolutely no inevitability, so long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening.

But we don’t remember those lives. We can’t read our diaries.’ ‘It doesn’t matter. We are where we are, however we got here. What matters is where we go next.’ ‘But can we choose that?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘We’re Dead. Can we really choose anything?’ ‘Maybe. If we want to bad enough.

Everything necessarily is or is not, and will be or will not be; but one cannot divide and say that one or the other is necessary.I mean, for example: it is necessary for there to be or not to be a sea-battle tomorrow; but it is not necessary for a sea-battle to take place tomorrow, or for one not to take place--though it is necessary for one to take place or not to take place.

The past is dead. Tomorrow will become whatever decision you make it. ~ Acheron.

Society is composed of men, and every man is a FREE agent. Since man is free, he can choose; since he can choose, he can err; since he can err, he can suffer. I go further: He must err and he must suffer; for his starting point is ignorance, and in his ignorance he sees before him an infinite number of unknown roads, all of which save one lead to error.

Who gets to decide what you want?

When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don't take are snuffed out like candles, as if they'd never existed. At that moment all Will's choices existed at once. But to keep them all in existence meant doing nothing. He had to choose, after all.

The choice is yours. You hold the tiller. You can steer the course you choose in the direction of where you want to be - today, tomorrow, or in a distant time to come.