Memories Of The Future Being Memoirs Of The Years 1915-1972, written In The YearOf Grace 1988

Excerpt: One day you were young, and you too wanted to write forecasts; and you too found that to envisage the future was arduous, that old ways of thinking and status quo ante judgments of value imposed themselves upon your mind, and made you despair of the true estimate and the adequate phrase. And you found that, however unclouded your own faculty of prognostication, you searched in vain for the magic touch which would interpret the future for your older contemporaries, take them forward with you and make them see it with your eyes, your presuppositions. If you could be now what you were then, though it be farther than ever removed from the new days of which this book is an awful warning, you would be more disposed to bear a young man?s nightmares with patience, and allow for him where he has exaggerated, and pardon him where he has erred.