Quote of the Day

All that we can observe consists of conceptual persuasions in the present. Such is the outcome of the literary habit of dwelling upon the long future or upon the long past. Literature preserves the wisdom of the human race; but in this way it enfeebles the emphasis of firsthand intuition. In considering our direct observation of past, or of future, we should confine ourselves to timespans of the order of magnitude of a second, or even of fractions of a second.

—Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas