Future
The future is the indefinite time period after the present. Its arrival is considered inevitable due to the existence of time and the laws of physics. Due to the apparent nature of reality and the unavoidability of the future, everything that currently exists and will exist can be categorized as either permanent, meaning that it will exist for the whole of the future or temporary, meaning that it won't and thus will come to an end. The future and the concept of eternity have been major subjects of philosophy, religion, and science and defining them non-controversially has consistently eluded the greatest of minds. It is the opposite of the past. In the Occidental view, which uses a linear conception of time, the future is the portion of the projected time line that is anticipated to occur. In special relativity, the future is considered to be absolute future or the future light cone. In physics, time is considered to be the fourth dimension of the universe.
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Famous quotes containing the word future:
“Only he who can view his own past as an abortion sprung from compulsion and need can use it to full advantage in the present. For what one has lived is at best comparable to a beautiful statue which has had all its limbs knocked off in transit, and now yields nothing but the precious block out of which the image of one’s future must be hewn.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“Perfect present has no existence in our consciousness. As I said years ago in Erewhon, it lives but upon the sufferance of past and future. We are like men standing on a narrow footbridge over a railway. We can watch the future hurrying like an express train towards us, and then hurrying into the past, but in the narrow strip of present we cannot see it. Strange that that which is the most essential to our consciousness should be exactly that of which we are least definitely conscious.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“To believe in something not yet proved and to underwrite it with our lives: it is the only way we can leave the future open. Man, surrounded by facts, permitting himself no surmise, no intuitive flash, no great hypothesis, no risk, is in a locked cell. Ignorance cannot seal the mind and imagination more surely.”
—Lillian Smith (1897–1966)