# Quote — Olaf Stapledon, Last And First Men

> Today we should welcome, and even study, every serious attempt to envisage the future of our race; not merely in order to grasp the very diverse and often tragic possibilities that confront us, but also that we may familiarize ourselves with the certainty that many of our most cherished ideals would seem puerile to more developed minds. To romance of the far future, then, is to attempt to see the human race in its cosmic setting, and to mould our hearts to entertain new values.

- Author: [Olaf Stapledon](https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon.md)
- Book: [Last And First Men](https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/last-and-first-men.md)
- Page: 9
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Olaf_Stapledon#Last_and_First_Men_(1930)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/last-and-first-men/today-we-should

## More from this book

> Yet though time is cyclic, it is not repetitive; there is no other time within which it can repeat itself.

p. 229 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/last-and-first-men/yet-though-time.md)

> [T]his is the goal of all living, that the cosmos may be known, and admired, and that it may be crowned with further beauties. Nowhere and at no time, so far as we can tell, at least within our own galaxy, has the adventure reached further than in ourselves. And in us, what has been achieved is but a minute beginning. But it is a real beginning.

p. 231 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/last-and-first-men/t-his-is-the.md)

> Socrates woke to the ideal of dispassionate intelligence, Jesus to the ideal of passionate yet self-oblivious worship. Socrates urged intellectual integrity, Jesus integrity of will. Each, of course, though starting with a different emphasis, involved the other.
>
> Unfortunately both these ideals demanded of the human brain a degree of vitality and coherence of which the nervous system of the First Men was never really capable.

p. 17 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/last-and-first-men/socrates-woke-to-the.md)