quotations about the future
Thank God we can't tell the future. We'd never get out of bed.
TRACY LETTS
August: Osage Country
The future is still unspoiled.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
A Long Fatal Love Chase
We are always looking into the future, but we see only the past.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Airelles," The Writings of Madame Swetchine
Perhaps the safest prediction we can make about the future is that it will surprise us.
GEORGE LEONARD
The Silent Pulse
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
God, in His great and infinite widsom, never intended that we should see into futurity, for had He gifted us with the power, it would have led to numberless cases of self-destruction. Who, that has gone through trials and troubles without number, in his weary journey and pilgrimage through this world of trial and woe, had he seen these trials and troubles in the bright and sunny days of his youth, could have lived to face them? Not one in a hundred. What mother, when gazing over her first born infant with pride, rapture, and delight beaming through the windows of her soul, could have believed that that child of hers would one day shut the door on her; or that he would stagger home, a rogue, liar, and confirmed drunkard? What blushing bride, leaving the altar with the husband of her choice, the man who has sworn before God to protect her, would believe that that arm she is then leaning on to support a heart loaded with love and joy, would, ere long, disgrace the manhood of its owner, and fell her to the ground? For our present peace, let us all thank God we cannot gaze into the mysterious regions of the future.
T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH
Short Essays
The future will soon be a thing of the past.
GEORGE CARLIN
Napalm and Silly Putty
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 is not an inheritance, it is an opportunity and an obligation.
BILL CLINTON
Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today.
AYN RAND
The Romantic Manifesto
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
If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow and which will not;
Speak then to me.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Mabeth
Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and with a manly heart.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Hyperion
Tomorrow will be a new day.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Don Quixote
Coming events cast their shadows before.
JAMES JOYCE
Ulysses
The best way to predict your future is to create it.
ROBERT ANTHONY
Think Big
What sense is there in continuing when one has seen the future?
ALAN LIGHTMAN
Einstein's Dreams
The problem with the future is that it keeps turning into the present.
BILL WATTERSON
Calvin and Hobbes
There is no present or future, only the past, happening over and over again, now.
EUGENE O'NEILL
A Moon for the Misbegotten
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"