Alfred North Whitehead Quotes

The passage of time is simply an illusion created by our brains.

Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy - that's the time that seems long in the memory. And this is right when you think about it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.

The slowness of time, for a man who knows nothing will happen, is brutal.

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 is important to me now, I tell myself.Not that it should pass quickly or slowly, but only be time, be something I live inside and fill with physical things and activities that I can divide it up by. so that it grows distict to me and does not vanish when I am not looking.

As you get older what you think was 10 years ago was actually 15 years ago.

Age affects how people experience time.

I have never been able to grasp the meaning of time. I don't believe it exists. I've felt this again and again, when alone and out in nature. On such occasions, time does not exist. Nor does the future exist.

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.

I think I have a strange relationship with time. I'm not really aware of that time passing. I don't feel that I'm wasteful with time. But I'm not aware of it passing.

Our specious present as such is very short. We do, however, experience passing events; part of the process of the passage of events is directly there in our experience, including some of the past and some of the future.

How we think about the future and the past determines everything about how we think about our situation as human beings.

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.

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

Time is but the space between our memories; as soon as we cease to perceive this space, time has disappeared.

It's psychologically a weird experience to be so aware of the fact that the real time of your life is moving much faster than the fictional time you're trying to depict. You start to feel very weighted down sometimes.

Is that all time is - our perception of how quickly it does or does not pass?

We're living in a certain time, and we're aware of it. And that's part of what we're aware of, along with our own personal aches and pains.

We all spend so much time worrying about the future that the present moment slips right out of our hands. And so all we have left is retrospection and anticipation, retrospection and anticipation. In which case what's left to recall but past anticipation? What's left to anticipate but future retrospection?

Most of us take for granted that time flies, meaning that it passes too quickly. But in the mindful state, time doesn't really pass at all. There is only a single instant of time that keeps renewing itself over and over with infinite variety.

For some reason, I have a very strange conception of time. I am constantly hovering at some overview, more macro.

The diameter of each day is measured by the stretch of thought - not by the rising and setting of the sun.

Time past and time future allow but a little consciousness. To be conscious is not to be in time.

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.