49 Time Travel Quotes

Time travel has long captured our imagination, weaving its way through literature, film, and even scientific speculation. Whether it’s the allure of reliving a cherished moment, correcting past mistakes, or peeking into the future, the concept of traversing time resonates deeply within us. In this spirit, we've compiled a curated list of the top 49 time travel quotes that will transport you through a myriad of perspectives, emotions, and possibilities. From timeless classics to modern musings, each quote offers a unique lens through which to explore the endless fascination of moving beyond the present. Join us on this journey as we delve into some of the most thought-provoking and inspiring reflections on the nature of time.

1. “If you see an antimatter version of yourself running towards you, think twice before embracing.” - J. Richard Gott

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

3. “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

4. “If the Universe came to an end every time there was some uncertainty about what had happened in it, it would never have got beyond the first picosecond. And many of course don't. It's like a human body, you see. A few cuts and bruises here and there don't hurt it. Not even major surgery if it's done properly. Paradoxes are just the scar tissue. Time and space heal themselves up around them and people simply remember a version of events which makes as much sense as they require it to make.” - Douglas Adams

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. “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

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

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

11. “I tell you all the time, you will never be able to replace me with a brass and steam contraption.” - Maeve Alpin

12. “When I am out there, in time, I am inverted, changed into a desperate version of myself. I become a thief, a vagrant, an animal who runs and hides. I startle old women and amaze children. I am a trick, an illusion of the highest order, so incredible that I am actually true.” - Audrey Niffenegger

13. “The first thing we should do in order to grasp the realm of time travel is by redefining general perception and common concepts regarding time within our daily language structure.” - Toba Beta

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

15. “People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff.” - Steven Moffat

16. “This is what I say: I've got good news and bad news.The good news is, you don't have to worry, you can't change the past.The bad news is, you don't have to worry, no matter how hard you try, you can't change the past.The universe just doesn't put up with that. We aren't important enough. No one is. Even in our own lives. We're not strong enough, willful enough, skilled enough in chronodiegetic manipulation to be able to just accidentally change the entire course of anything, even ourselves.” - Charles Yu

17. “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

18. “Love is the net profit on life.” - Sharon L. Reddy

19. “Why had he done it? Why couldn't it just not have happened? Why didn't they have time-travel, why couldn't he go back and stop it happening? Ships that could circumnavigate the galaxy in a few years, and count every cell in your body from light-years off, but he wasn't able to go back one miserable day and alter one tiny, stupid, idiotic, shameful decision...” - Iain M. Banks

20. “He met me at the airport; it was ten in the morning, Washington time, when I arrived, after having taken a plane that left Los Angeles International at 10:10 A.M. Los Angeles time. Who says time-reversal is hard to accomplish?” - Robert Silverberg

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

22. “Vane’s lips tightened to suppress a smile. “Why so hostile, love?”“You whacked me on the head with a ball!”“You deserved it.” - Priya Ardis

23. “Matt was almost completely naked. A tattered loincloth and an ugly chain with a yellow diamond were his only apparel.” - Priya Ardis

24. “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

25. “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

26. “I was in '78 recently," he announced. "I brought you this."He handed me a single by the Beatles. I didn't recognize the title."Didn't they split in '70?""Not always. How are things?” - Jasper Fforde

27. “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

28. “Past and future are the same, and we cannot change either, only know them more fully. My journey to the past had changed nothing, but what I had learned had changed everything, and I understood that it could not have been otherwise. If our lives are tales that Allah tells, then we are the audience as well as the players, and it is by living these tales that we receive their lessons.” - Ted Chiang

29. “All the various time travel devices used by Verne and Bert were stored in the repository, Poe explained, including the ones that had never quite worked as they were meant to. There was one that resembled a blue police box from London—“Stolen by a doctor with delusions of grandeur,” said Poe—one that was simply a large, transparent sphere—“Created by a scientist with green skin and too much ego,” said Verne—and one that was rather ordinary by comparison.“This one looks like an automobile,” John said admiringly, “with wings.”“The doors open that way for a reason,” Verne explained, “we just never figured out what it was. The inventor of this particular model tried integrating his designs into a car, an airplane, and even a steam engine train. He was running a crackpot laboratory in the Arizona desert, and he never realized that it was not his inventions themselves, but his proximity to some sort of temporal fluctuation in the local topography, that allowed them to work.” “What happened to him?” asked Jack.“He’d get the machines up to one hundred and six miles per hour,” said Bert, “and then he’d run out of fuel and promptly get arrested by whatever constabulary had been chasing him. The sad part was that Jules figured out if he’d just gone two miles an hour faster, he’d likely have been successful in his attempt.” - James A. Owen

30. “Every great day has a story and a song!” - Faith Reese Martin

31. “History doesn't repeat itself, but it harmonizes, and what it usually makes is the devil's music.” - Stephen King

32. “Do you think we can be friends?” I asked.He stared up at the ceiling. “Probably not, but we can pretend.” - Priya Ardis

33. “He’d used the amulet to read my thoughts again. I pictured smacking him in the face.” - Priya Ardis

34. “You couldn't changed history. But you could get it right to start with. Do something differently the FIRST time around.This whole business with seeking Slytherin's secrets... seemed an awful lot like the sort of thing where, years later, you would look back and say, 'And THAT was where it all started to go wrong.'And he would wish desperately for the ability to fall back through time and make a different choice. Wish granted. Now what?” - Eliezer Yudkowsky

35. “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

36. “Are you saying that we can affect what happened in the past? That we can change it?” - Michelle Madow

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

38. “We are all time voyagers leaving history in our wake, pioneering into the future.” - Erwin Raphael McManus

39. “Sometimes life can be unexpected. Sometimes things surprise you and all you can do is roll with the punches or let them beat you to a bloody pulp. -Sage Hannigan, Contingency” - P. S. Martinez

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

41. “‎W. H. Auden once suggested that to understand your own country you need to have lived in at least two others. One can say something similar for periods of time: to understand your own century you need to have come to terms with at least two others. The key to learning something about the past might be a ruin or an archive but the means whereby we may understand it is--and always will be--ourselves.” - Ian Mortimer

42. “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

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

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

45. “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

46. “Sometime we don't always get what we want!" shouted Evie, not knowing herself. "That's life!"... The Captain, still looking at her, raised his eyebrows in surprise. He was proud of her for being brave enough to shout at (the villain), but he said softly to her, "Usually men with knives at your friend's neck get what they want, Evelyn.” - Elizabeth Newton

47. “Linc was so amazed at what he saw and heard, “This is sooo cool. I love this place. This looks way better than a day spotting weird people at Walmart.” - S.W. Lothian

48. “Because it's all about the journey...” - Selena Fulton

49. “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