Sarah

“For unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax.
There is no point whatever in making plans for a future which you will
never be able to enjoy. When your plans mature, you will still be living
for some other future beyond. You will never, never be able to sit back
with full contentment and say, "Now, I've arrived!" Your entire
education has deprived you of this capacity because it was preparing
you for the future, instead of showing you how to be alive now.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“What we see as death,
empty space, or nothingness is only the trough between the crests of this
endlessly waving ocean. It is all part of the illusion that there should
seem to be something to be gained in the future, and that there is an
urgent necessity to go on and on until we get it. Yet just as there is no
time but the present, and no one except the all-and-everything, there is
never anything to be gained—though the zest of the game is to pretend
that there is.”
― Alan Wilson Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

“Or consider a story in the Jewish Talmud left out of the Book of Genesis. (It is in doubtful accord with the account of the apple, the Tree of Knowledge, the Fall, and the expulsion from Eden.) In The Garden, God tells Eve and Adam that He has intentionally left the Universe unfinished. It is the responsibility of humans, over countless generations, to participate with God in a "glorious" experiment - the "completing of the Creation."
The burden of such a responsibility is heavy, especially on so weak and imperfect a species as ours, one with so unhappy a history. Nothing remotely like "completion" can be attempted without vastly more knowledge than we have today. But, perhaps, if our very existence is at stake, we will find ourselves able to rise to this supreme challenge.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

“The visions we offer our children shape the future. It _matters_ what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space