Alvin Toffler's Quotes

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.

Future shock is the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time.

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

You've got to think about big things while you're doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.

Change is not merely necessary to life - it is life.

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

Knowledge is the most democratic source of power.

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

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

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

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

Parenthood remains the greatest single preserve of the amateur.

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.

I work virtually every waking hour.

Anyone nit-picking enough to write a letter of correction to an editor doubtless deserves the error that provoked it.

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

Technology feeds on itself. Technology makes more technology possible.

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

The great growling engine of change - technology.

My wife and I, unlike many intellectuals, spent five years working on assembly lines. We came to fully understand the criticisms of the industrial age, in which you are an appendage of a machine that sets the pace.

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

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.