38 Insightful Time Travel Quotes

Time travel has long captivated the human imagination, offering a fascinating bridge between past, present, and future. Whether it's the allure of witnessing historical events firsthand or the curiosity about future possibilities, the concept challenges our perceptions of reality and time. In exploring the profound wisdom and playful musings that emerge from this theme, we've curated a collection of the top 38 insightful time travel quotes. These quotes, spanning various literary, cinematic, and philosophical sources, invite us to reflect on the complexities and paradoxes of time itself. Join us on this intriguing journey through words to uncover perspectives that might just alter your own understanding of time.

1. “I am charging you with the protection of my mother and friends, not to mention keeping my younger self off the Internet. He is as dangerous as Opal.” - Eoin Colfer

2. “Have you ever wondered how nostalgia isn"t what it used to be?” - Jasper Fforde

3. “He waved to me to be quiet, as if I were annoying background noise. "Look, whatever your name is..."Benvolio Montague."Right. Look, Benvolio, why don't we go outside and get a taxi? My label has a New York office. We can go there and get you a money order or something." He smile, thinking himself clever. "Come on, what do you say?"Benvolio raised an eyebrow. "I am begining to believe that you are insane.” - Suzanne Selfors

4. “Without unscrambled eggs, there was no time travel, no more depredation of the Now, and we could look to a brighter future of long-term thought--and more reading.” - Jasper Fforde

5. “He holds her with the strength of a million-man army, but with all the tenderness of her heart lying naked in the palms of his hands.” - Laura Kreitzer

6. “I'll just tell you what I remember because memory is as close as I've gotten to building my own time machine.” - Samantha Hunt

7. “When the time travel is eventually doable technologically,yesterday was dead a man who is going to be born tomorrow.” - Toba Beta

8. “That's just how time travel looks like to the untrained eye. The reason why there aren't more travelers is that your average physicist refuses to be eaten by a giraffe in the name of science.” - Bradley Sands

9. “Ach, wie ich sie umfing, wie ich in ihre Arme stürzte, mit welch verzweiflungsvoller Inbrunst ich in ihrem Fleisch wühlte, als könnte ich in ihrem Leibe das Geheimnis ihrer Seele schlürfen.” - Oswald Levett

10. “War between free-will and predestination makes the idea of time travel is still too difficult to digest.” - Toba Beta

11. “I can not travel into my past,without consent of the future me.” - Toba Beta

12. “I raise my head and see a red illuminated EXIT sign and as my eyes adjust I see tigers, cavemen with long spears, cavewomen wearing strategically modest skins, wolfish dogs. My heart is racing and for a liquor-addled moment I think Holy shit, I've gone all the way back to the Stone Age until I realize that EXIT signs tend to congregate in the twentieth century.” - Audrey Niffenegger

13. “Ich wollte meine Augen öffnen, um Gideon ein letztes Mal anzusehen, aber ich schaffte es nicht."Ich liebe dich, Gwenny, bitte verlass mich nicht", sagte Gideon, und das war das letzte, was ich hörte, bevor ich von einem großen Nichts verschluckt wurde.” - Kerstin Gier

14. “What is more precious: a thousand answers derived from one question? Or, one answer…from a thousand questions?” - G. F. Smith

15. “He was dead. However, his nose throbbed painfully, which he thought odd in the circumstances.” - Diana Gabaldon

16. “Yeah, but what if you went back and killed your own grandfather?"He stared at me, baffled. "Why the fuck would you do that?” - Stephen King

17. “Party lights hang over the street, yellow and red and green. Sadie stumbles over someone’s chair, but I’m ready for this and I catch her easily by the arm.“Sorry, clumsy,” she says.“You always were, Sadie. One of your more endearing traits.”Before she can ask about that I slip my arm around her waist. She slips hers around mine, still looking up at me. The lights skate across her cheeks and shine in her eyes. We clasp hands, fingers folding together naturally, and for me the years fall away like a coat that’s too heavy and too tight. In that moment, I hope on thing above all others: that she was not too busy to find at least one good man …She speaks in a voice almost too low to be heard over the music. But I hear her – I always did. “Who are you, George?”“Someone you knew in another life, honey.” - Stephen King

18. “The past is obdurate.” - Stephen King

19. “A mathematician makes plans to travel backwards in time through a wormhole to a parallel universe when he can't even make it to Mars with the fastest rocket on hand today.” - Bill Gaede

20. “Vane grabbed me. “DuLac, let’s chat.”Chat. British-speak for “Stand still while I yell at you.” - Priya Ardis

21. “I caught his hand. “What do you want me to do?”Leaning down, he kissed the pulse beating on my neck just above the damaged skin. “Tomorrow, I need you to die.” - Priya Ardis

22. “Rough palms cradled my face while my fingers gripped the pillow on either side of his. Lips, teeth, tongue, mingled together. I ate him up and didn’t let go until I had to come up for air.” - Priya Ardis

23. “Are you done briefing the company yet?""We, um... Haven't gotten through the introductions yet.""Allow me: Time-traveling Kevyn Andreyasn, this is the mercenary company "Tagon's Toughs.""Company, this is the time-traveling Kevyn Andreyasn, who will have become your captain thirty-two hours from now, as of seven weeks ago.Now, quick. Let's go save the galaxy while they're confused.” - Howard Tayler

24. “Gentle he would be, denied he would not.” - Diana Gabaldon

25. “You are telling me that I did something because I was going to do something.”“Well, didn’t you? You were there.”“No, I didn’t—no… well, maybe I did, but it didn’t feel like it.”“Why should you expect it to? It was something totally new to your experience.”“But… but—” Wilson took a deep breath and got control of himself. Then he reached back into his academic philosophical concepts and produced the notion he had been struggling to express. “It denies all reasonable theories of causation. You would have me believe that causation can be completely circular. I went through because I came back from going through to persuade myself to go through. That’s silly.”“Well, didn’t you?"~ By His Bootstraps / Robert A. Heinlein” - Robert A. Heinlein

26. “There’s a difference between a mistake and a regret. Everything up to this moment has made this moment. If you can change a mistake, then go out and do what you can to change it. If you can’t change it, there’s no use regretting it because it will just make you miserable. Live right now, even if that involves dealing with the consequences of your actions. Time travel always ends badly.” - Rebecca McKinsey

27. “Prospective research looks forward in time to see how a group of individual change over time while retrospective research looks backward in time and attempts to reconstruct the conditions that led to the current situation.” - Shelley E Taylor

28. “Have you ever heard of the theory of relativity?"Artemis blinked. "Is this a joke? I have traveled through time, Doctor. I think I know a little something about relativity.” - Eoin Colfer

29. “Shh! Listen! Someone’s coming! I think — I think it might be us!” - J.K. Rowling

30. “I just hope we don’t cause a major paradox.” - Michelle Madow

31. “Seriously, this old woman had no idea how close she came to being squashed like a roach. -Sage Hannigan, Contingency” - P. S. Martinez

32. “When I was small, I never wanted to step in puddles. Not because of any fear of drowned worms or wet stockings; I was by and large a grubby child, with a blissful disregard for filth of any kind.It was because I couldn't bring myself believe that that perfect smooth expanse was no more than I thin film of water over solid earth. I believed it was an opening into some fathomless space. Sometimes, seeing the tiny ripples caused by my approach, I thought the puddle impossibly deep, a bottomless sea in which the lazy coil of a tentacle and gleam of scale lay hidden, with the threat of huge bodies and sharp teeth adrift and silent in the far-down depths.And then, looking down into reflection, I would see my own round face and frizzled hair against a featureless blue sweep, and think instead that the puddle was the entrance to another sky. If I stepped in there, I would drop at once, and keep on falling, on and on, into blue space.The only time I would dare walk though a puddle was at twilight, when the evening stars came out. If I looked in the water and saw one lighted pinprick there, I could slash through unafraid--for if I should fall into the puddle and on into space, I could grab hold of the star as I passed, and be safe.Even now, when I see a puddle in my path, my mind half-halts--though my feet do not--then hurries on, with only the echo of the though left behind.What if, this time, you fall?” - Diana Gabaldon

33. “Time is not duration but intensity; time is the beat and the interval [...]” - Ursula K. Le Guin

34. “I loved you backward and forward in time. I loved you beyond boundaries of time and space.” - Dan Simmons

35. “This was too much for him to handle. It was like watching memories of his life play out from a different camera angle, sometimes with new scenes added. He was living DVD extras.” - Dennis Sharpe

36. “Psychiatrist and Auschwitz survivor, Viktor Frankl, stated, "...man is by no means merely a product of heredity and environment. There is a third element: decision. Man ultimately decides for himself!” - Alice A. Kemp

37. “You can't show me the Earth from space and fly right past the moon, entice me into this magical machine and invite me to come with you, and then ask me to stay behind!” - Elizabeth Newton

38. “It took a long moment, but Gerard finally raised his head and looked Jon in the eye. “It meant that I have not been honest with you, Jon Calder, and if you are to understand the danger you are in now, I must tell you everything, no matter if you believe me or not.” - Hank Edwards