“Although our eyes can not penetrate the darkness of the future, scientific geopolitical analysis enables us to make certain predictions.”

“Nothing is certain,” he murmured. “The future is constantly changing, and no one can predict what happens next. We have the power to change our destiny, because fate is not set in stone, and we are always free to make a choice.”

“(The subjects of What Should I Do With The Rest Of My Life) "have convinced me that past failing can as easily prove preparatory as predictive. Age does not of itself limit on enable us. The choice is ours.”

“If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.”

“Otherwise, all I remember of the denizens of the Nocturama is that several of them had strikingly large eyes, and the fixed inquiring gaze found in certain painters and philosophers who seek to penetrate the darkness which surrounds us purely by means of looking and thinking.”

“Man can only be certain about the present moment. But is that quite true either? Can he really know the present? Is he in a position to make any judgment about it? Certainly not. For how can a person with no knowledge of the future understand the meaning of the present? If we do not know what future the present is leading us toward, how can we say whether this present is good or bad, whether it deserves our concurrence, or our suspicion, or our hatred?”