Alvin Toffler

“Most managers were trained to be the thing they most despise - bureaucrats.”

“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.”

“Profits, like sausages... are esteemed most by those who know least about what goes into them.”

“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.”

“We futurists have a magic button. We follow every statement about a failed forecast with 'yet.'”

“One of the definitions of sanity is the ability to tell real from unreal. Soon we'll need a new definition.”

“The biggest tragedy I had was the loss of my daughter from neuromuscular disease in 2000, at age 46.”

“You can use all the quantitative data you can get, but you still have to distrust it and use your own intelligence and judgment.”

“One of the more fantastic possibilities is that man will be able to make biological carbon copies of himself.”

“Nobody knows the future with certainty. We can, however, identify ongoing patterns of change.”

“The Law of Raspberry Jam: the wider any culture is spread, the thinner it gets.”

“I work virtually every waking hour.”

“Man has a limited biological capacity for change. When this capacity is overwhelmed, the capacity is in future shock.”

“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.”

“Technology feeds on itself. Technology makes more technology possible.”

“Our technological powers increase, but the side effects and potential hazards also escalate.”

“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.”

“The illiterate of the future will not be the person who cannot read. It will be the person who does not know how to learn.”

“The great growling engine of change - technology.”

“It is better to err on the side of daring than the side of caution.”