Your first duty as a writer is to write to please yourself. And you have no duty towards anyone else.
Iris ChangRead
When you believe you have a future, you think in terms of generations and years. When you do not, you live not just by the day — but by the minute.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that having hope for the future influences our long-term thinking, while a lack of it leads to a focus on the present moment.
Iris Chang's quote highlights the profound effect that our beliefs about the future have on our mindset and behavior. When we believe that we have a future, we tend to plan and consider the implications of our actions over generations and years, fostering a sense of purpose and direction. In contrast, if we feel hopeless or uncertain about the future, our perspective shrinks to the immediacy of minutes and days, resulting in a more reactive and less intentional way of living. This emphasizes the importance of hope and vision in shaping our lives.
Themes
FutureBeliefHopePerspectiveLivingPlanning
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational speech about the importance of vision and planning for the future.
More from Iris Chang
All quotes →The spoken word vanished with the wind. Likewise, the unrecorded life disappears as if it never existed.
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For some reason, I seem to be bothered whenever I see acts of injustice and assaults on people's civil liberties. I imagine what I write in the future will follow in that vein. Whether it's fiction or non-fiction.
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Racism is always there underneath, but usually it is exploited in these times of economic crisis, and it's hard to find out when one slides into another.
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Almost all people have this potential for evil, which would be unleashed only under certain dangerous social circumstances.
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