quotations about the future
We have no idea, now, of who or what the inhabitants of our future might be. In that sense, we have no future. Not in the sense that our grandparents had a future, or thought they did. Fully imagined cultural futures were the luxury of another day, one in which 'now' was of some greater duration. For us, of course, things can change so abruptly, so violently, so profoundly, that futures like our grandparents' have insufficient 'now' to stand on. We have no future because our present is too volatile.... We have only risk management. The spinning of the given moment's scenarios. Pattern recognition.
WILLIAM GIBSON
Pattern Recognition
Perhaps the safest prediction we can make about the future is that it will surprise us.
GEORGE LEONARD
The Silent Pulse
We must discipline ourselves to convert dreams into plans, and plans into goals, and goals into those small daily activities that will lead us, one sure step at a time, toward a better future.
JIM ROHN
Five Major Pieces To the Life Puzzle
The problem with the future is that it keeps turning into the present.
BILL WATTERSON
Calvin and Hobbes
It is not the present which unfluences the future, thou fool, but the future which forms the present. You have it all backward. Since the future is set, an unfolding of events which will assure that future is fixed and inevitable.
FRANK HERBERT
Children of Dune
We're not responsible for the world we're born into. Only for the world we leave when we die. So we have to accept what's gone before us in the past, and work to change the only thing we can--the future.
WILLIAM SHATNER
The Ashes of Eden
The past and future are veiled; but the past wears the widow's veil; the future, the virgin's.
JEAN PAUL
Treasury of Thought
The future ain't what it used to be.
YOGI BERRA
Rational behavior ... depends upon a ceaseless flow of data from the environment. It depends upon the power of the individual to predict, with at least a fair success, the outcome of his own actions. To do this, he must be able to predict how the environment will respond to his acts. Sanity, itself, thus hinges on man's ability to predict his immediate, personal future on the basis of information fed him by the environment.
ALVIN TOFFLER
Future Shock
Tomorrow gives a beck'ning hand--
I turn my face away;
I'll not invite her to my home--
I only love Today.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
"Today"
Thank God we can't tell the future. We'd never get out of bed.
TRACY LETTS
August: Osage Country
I saw the days of the year stretching ahead like a series of bright, white boxes, and separating one box from another was sleep, like a black shade. Only for me, the long perspective of shades that set off one box from the next day had suddenly snapped up, and I could see day after day after day glaring ahead of me like a white, broad, infinitely desolate avenue.
SYLVIA PLATH
The Bell Jar
Whether we shape the future in the image of our hopes, is ours to determine by our actions and our choices.
RICHARD NIXON
Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1969
The future is not always a whole new ball game. There tends to be unfinished business. One trails all sorts of things around with one, things that simply won't be got rid of.
ANITA BROOKNER
Lewis Percy
The future was a time that called into question everything that came before it.
IVAN KLIMA
Waiting for the Dark
The future will soon be a thing of the past.
GEORGE CARLIN
Napalm and Silly Putty
The future is still unspoiled.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
A Long Fatal Love Chase
It is impossible for you to take power over the future because it isn't even real.
WM. PAUL YOUNG
The Shack
Coming events cast their shadows before.
JAMES JOYCE
Ulysses
We are the first men of a Future that has not materialized. We belong to a "great age" that has not "come off". We moved too quickly for the world. We set too sharp a pace.
WYNDHAM LEWIS
Blasting and Bombardiering