A Quote by R. D. Laing

To live in the past or in the future may be less satisfying than to live in the present, but it can never be as disillusioning.

R. D. Laing

Quote Topics

Future In The Past Less Live Live In The Present May Never Past Present Satisfying Than

Quote Author

R. D. Laing
Scottish - Psychologist
October 7, 1927 - August 23, 1989

We cannot live in the past; it is gone. Nor can we live in the future; it is forever beyond our grasp. We can live only in the present. If we are unaware of our present actions, we are condemned to repeating the mistakes of the past and can never succeed in attaining our dreams for the future.

S. N. Goenka

Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light is throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so.

Blaise Pascal

I think the future is like anything else that's important. It has to be earned. If we don't earn it, we don't have a future at all. And if we don't earn it, we don't deserve it, we have to live in the present, more or less forever. Or worse, we have to live in the past. I think that's probably what love is - a way of earning the future.

Gregory David Roberts

It is difficult to live in the present, ridiculous to live in the future, and impossible to live in the past. Nothing is as far away as one minute ago.

Jim Bishop

It is difficult to live in the present, ridiculous to live in the future and impossible to live in the past. Nothing is as far away as one minute ago.

Jim Bishop

It is impossible to live in the past, difficult to live in the present and a waste to live in the future.

Frank Herbert

Remember the past, live the present, think a little less about the future.

Amaal Mallik

I'm not someone who lives in the past; I find other people live in my past. I live in the present and the future.

Marisa Berenson

Marriage is an effort to legalize love. It is out of fear. It is thinking about the future, about the tomorrows. Man always thinks of the past and the future, and because of this constant thinking about past and future, he destroys the present. And the present is the only reality there is. One has to live in the present. The past has to die and has to be allowed to die.

Rajneesh

Tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live. There is no other reality than present reality, so that, even if one were to live for endless ages, to live for the future would be to miss the point everlastingly.

Alan Watts

You are so anxious about the future that you do not enjoy the present. You therefore do not live in the present or the future. You live as if you are never going to die, and then die having never really lived.

Dalai Lama

It is no more possible to live in the future than it is to live in the past. If life is not now, it is never.

Wendell Berry

One has to live in the present. Whatever is past is gone beyond recall; whatever is future remains beyond one's reach, until it becomes present. Remembering the past and giving thought to the future are important, but only to the extent that they help one deal with the present.

S. N. Goenka

Live in the present and shape the future, do not be casting lingering looks to the distant past for the past has passed away, never again to return.