Alvin Toffler Quotes

Rational behavior requires theory. Reactive behavior requires only reflex action.

We will never have 100 percent certainty except in hindsight.

A pinch of probability is worth a pound of perhaps.

What we get, and all we ever get, from the outside is information; how we choose to act on this information is up to us.

I think there's data, and then there's information that comes from data, and then there's knowledge that comes from information. And then, after knowledge, there is wisdom. I am interested in how to get from data to wisdom.

The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as the sculptor works on his block of stone.

[Women] tend to collect more pieces of data when they think, put them into more complex patterns, see more options and outcomes. They tend to be contextual, holistic thinkers.

Data is not intelligence.

Do men who have got all their marbles go swimming in lakes with their clothes on?

It is an old cliche to say that the future is in the hands of the young. This is no longer true. The quality of life to be enjoyed or the existence to be survived by our children and future generations is in our hands now.

If you will believe me, you who are young, yours is the golden season of life. As you have heard it called, so it verily is, the seed-time of life; in which, if you do not sow, or if you sow tares instead of wheat, you cannot expect to reap well afterwards, and you will arrive at little. And in the course of years when you come to look back, if you have not done what you have heard from your advisers,-and among many counsellors there is wisdom,-you will bitterly repent when it is too late.

Time is the most valuable asset you don’t own. You may or may not realize it yet, but how you use or don’t use your time is going to be the best indication of where your future is going to take you .

I think it is undeniably true that the human brain must work in models. The trick is to have your brain work better than the other person's brain because it understands the most fundamental models- ones that will do most work per unit.

It is impossible to live without brains, either one's own or borrowed.

And, when you can't go back, you have to worry only about the best way of moving forward.

The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.

Faced with information overload, we have no alternative but pattern-recognition.

The most effortful forms of slow thinking are those that require you to think fast.

If we want a new future that does not look like our past, we must make new choices in the present.

Live only for today, and you ruin tomorrow.

We need both information and thinking. Information is no substitute for thinking and thinking is no substitute for information.

In theory, there is nothing the computer can do that the human mind can not do. The computer merely takes a finite amount of data and performs a finite number of operations upon them. The human mind can duplicate the process

The best eraser in the world is a good night's sleep.

The future is literally in our hands to mold as we like. But we cannot wait until tomorrow. Tomorrow is now.