A Quote by Derek Parfit

We might neglect our future selves because of some failure of belief or imagination. — © Derek Parfit
We might neglect our future selves because of some failure of belief or imagination.
The problems of a retired schoolteacher in Duluth are OUR problems. That the future of the child in Buffalo is OUR future. That the struggle of a disabled man in Boston to survive and live decently is OUR struggle. That The hunger of a woman in Little Rock is OUR hunger. That the failure anywhere to provide what reasonably we might to avoid pain is OUR failure.
We are all engaged in the task of peeling off the false selves, the programmed selves, the selves created by our families, our culture, our religions. It is an enormous task because the history of women has been as incompletely told as the history of blacks.
Our fears are an amazing gift of the imagination... a way of glimpsing what might be the future when there's still time to influence how that future will play out.
Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination.
Our fears are an amazing gift of the imagination, a kind of everyday clairvoyance, a way of glimpsing what might be the future when there's still time to influence how that future will play out.
I really feel that some people neglect and overlook compassion because they associate it with religion. Of course, everyone is free to choose whether they pay religion any regard, but to neglect compassion is a mistake because it is the source of our own well-being.
Perhaps we've got so involved in the false selves we project on social media that we've forgotten that our real selves, our private selves, are different, are worth saving.
We are all in situations of our own choosing. Our thinking creates a pathway to success or failure. By disclaiming responsibility for our present, we crush the prospect of an incredible future that might have been ours.
The failure of modern living is the failure of the imagination...Literature is the royal road that enables us to enter the realm of the imagination.
When I pray, I'm just talking to what some people might call our higher selves: God, myself, my intuition, my heart. Whatever that is, that's where I go.
Wishing is the beginning of imagination. They practice wishing when they are young things, and then -when they have grown - they have a developed imagination. Which can do some harm - greed, that kind of thing - but more often does them some good. They can imagine that things might be different. Might be other than they seem. Could be better.
If we deny our awesome challenge; turn our backs on the living universe, and forsake our cosmic destiny, we will commit a crime of unutterable magnitude. Mankind alone has the power to carry out this fundamental change in the universe. Our failure would lead to consequences unthinkable. This is perhaps the first and only chance the universe will ever have to awaken from its long night and live. We are the caretakers of this delicate spark of Life. To let it flicker and die through ignorance, neglect, or lack of imagination is a horror too great to contemplate.
Every idea is an incitement. It offers itself for belief, and if believed it is acted on unless some other belief outweighs it or some failure of energy stifles the movement at its birth. The only difference between the expression of an opinion and an incitement is the speaker's enthusiasm for the result.
Let the villages of the future live in our imagination, so that we might one day come to live in them!
Any faith that does not command the one who holds it is not a real belief; it is a pseudo belief only. And it might shock some of us profoundly if we were brought suddenly face to face with our beliefs and forced to test them in the fires of practical living.
Why do we fail? Is it because we are unlucky? Is it because we have not worked very hard? I s it because we have not invoked God's Compassion and Blessings? Is it because God has accepted this failure as an experience He wanted to have in our life? Is it because God has granted this failure to us? Is it because God has willed that we should lose? No! not it is for a different reason that we experience failure. It is for the strengthening of our consciousness that, at times, God grants us defeat.
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