Alvin Toffler
Futurist
1928-10-04 – 2016-06-27
Alvin Toffler was an American writer and futurist known for Future Shock and The Third Wave. His work analyzed long-term social and technological change. He died in 2016.
Books by Alvin Toffler
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Future shock
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The third wave
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Quotes by Alvin Toffler
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The secret message communicated to most young people today by the society around them is that they are not needed, that the society will run itself quite nicely until they - at some distant point in the future - will take over the reigns. Yet the fact is that the society is not running itself nicely... because the rest of us need all the energy, brains, imagination and talent that young people can bring to bear down on our difficulties. For society to attempt to solve its desperate problems without the full participation of even very young people is imbecile.
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The secret message communicated to most young people today by the society around them is that they are not needed, that the society will run itself quite nicely until they - at some distant point in the future - will take over the reigns. Yet the fact is that the society is not running itself nicely... because the rest of us need all the energy, brains, imagination and talent that young people can bring to bear down on our difficulties. For society to attempt to solve its desperate problems without the full participation of even very young people is imbecile.
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The biggest tragedy I had was the loss of my daughter from neuromuscular disease in 2000, at age 46.
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You've got to think about big things while you're doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.
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We futurists have a magic button. We follow every statement about a failed forecast with 'yet.'
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The next major explosion is going to be when genetics and computers come together. I'm talking about an organic computer - about biological substances that can function like a semiconductor.
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Our technological powers increase, but the side effects and potential hazards also escalate.
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To think that the new economy is over is like somebody in London in 1830 saying the entire industrial revolution is over because some textile manufacturers in Manchester went broke.
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We must search out totally new ways to anchor ourselves, for all the old roots religion, nation, community, family, or profession are now shaking under the hurricane impact of the accelerative thrust.
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My wife and I, unlike many intellectuals, spent five years working on assembly lines. We came to fully understand the criticisms of the industrial age, in which you are an appendage of a machine that sets the pace.
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One of the definitions of sanity is the ability to tell real from unreal. Soon we'll need a new definition.
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People of the future may suffer not from an absence of choice but from a paralysing surfeit of it. They may turn out to be victims of that peculiarly super-industrial dilemma: overchoice.
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It is better to err on the side of daring than on the side of caution.
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Anyone nit-picking enough to write a letter of correction to an editor doubtless deserves the error that provokes it.
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The illiterate of the twenty-first century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.
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Future shock: the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time.
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Parenthood remains the greatest single preserve of the amateur.
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The law of raspberry jam: The wider any culture is spread, the thinner it gets.
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