Fred Polak Quotes

:(2) The future is partly knowable for man: thinking back = thinking forward;

:(9) The effectiveness to be aimed at calls for the application and refinement of all conceivable prognostic techniques for adding to knowledge of the future, including those which can be effectively developed over an ever-wider time scale...

:(4) Determining one’s own destiny implies two things: ready acceptance of a stewardship for the future and of the duty to make a choice;

Once he (man) became conscious of creating images of the future, he became a participant in the process of creating this future.

:(1) I think about the future, therefore I am and can be a human being;

Awareness of ideal values is the first step in the conscious creation of images of the future... for a value is by definition that which guides a ‘valued’ future.

The rise and fall of images of the future precedes or accompanies the rise and fall of cultures. The image of the future can act not only as a barometer, but as a regulative mechanism which alternately opens and shuts the dampers on the mighty blast-furnace of culture. It not only indicates alternative choices and possibilities, but actively promotes certain choices and in effect puts them to work in determining the future. A close examination of prevailing images, then, puts us in a position to forecast the probable future. Any culture which finds itself in the condition of our present culture, turning aside from its own heritage of positive visions of the future, or actively at work in changing these positive visions into negative ones, has no future...

The rise and fall of images of the future precedes or accompanies the rise and fall of cultures. As long as a society's image is positive and flourishing, the flower of culture is in full bloom. Once the image begins to decay and lose its vitality, however, the culture does not long survive.

Utopism is the forerunner of all modem conceptions concerning social policy, social organization, and social peace. All the art of social engineering could not place one stone upon another in the social edifice if the broad outlines of the system as an idea had not been projected long before, and if the seeds of the motivating ideals had not early been sowed in the hearts of men.

All kinds of separate, fragmented portions of the jigsaw puzzle are of little avail, unless they are fitted together in the best possible way, to form an image of the future depicting a number of main areas of development.

:(8) Optimum realization aims at a harmonious synthesis of effectiveness and justice in the furthest possible surveyable part of future time;

:(7) Thought models, or models of the future, are useful insofar as they can reasonably contribute towards the optimum realization of man’s future-directed wishes and actions in a given situation or period;

The brain attempts to recognize this odor image by scanning and resolving it into previously stored patterns

:(6) For this purpose everyone, choosing in complete freedom and on his own responsibility, must be able and permitted to utilize all the philosophical and scientific thought models useful for this vital choice;

My own philosophical position, if I may put it that way, is very briefly as follows: