Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present. ~ Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

The future is the period of time after the present, or the events that will occur in that time. A – B – C – D – E – F – G – H – I – J – K – L – M – N – O – P – Q – R – S – T – U – V – W – X – Y – Z – Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations – See also – External links

The future isn't written. It can be changed. You know that. Anyone can make their future whatever they want it to be. ~ Doc Emmett Brown (played by Christopher Lloyd) in Back to the Future Part III (1990)
You can never plan the future by the past. ~ Edmund Burke
The empires of the future are the empires of the mind. ~ Winston Churchill
If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future. ~ Winston Churchill
Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point, answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that will be, or are they shadows of things that may be only? ~ Charles Dickens
Take hold of the future or the future will take hold of you -- be futurewise. ~ Patrick Dixon
Your task is not to foresee the future, but to enable it. ~ Antoine de Saint Exupéry
The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented. ~ Dennis Gabor
If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one. ~ John Galsworthy
The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed. ~ William Gibson
The greatest danger to our future is apathy. ~ Jane Goodall
The future is not what is coming at us, but what we are headed for. ~ Jean-Marie Guyau
A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future. ~ Robert A. Heinlein
Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today. ~ Ernest Hemingway
In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists. ~ Eric Hoffer
Those who appeal to you to hold on to the past do so at the cost of denying you your future. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson
The best way to predict the future is to invent it. ~ Alan Kay
The future is not laid out on a track. It is something that we can decide, and to the extent that we do not violate any known laws of the universe, we can probably make it work the way that we want to. ~ Alan Kay
We can have faith in the future only if we have faith in ourselves. ~ John F. Kennedy
The future exists only in imagination; and that is why, no matter how hard you try to imagine it, you will not be able to predict the future with total certainty. ~ Barry Long
Look not mournfully into the Past; it comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present; it is thine.
Go forth to meet the shadowy Future without fear and with a manly heart. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The future is a world limited by ourselves. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck
We have a choice. We can shape our future, or let events shape it for us. And if we want to succeed, we can't fall back on the stale debates and old divides that won't move us forward. ~ Barack Obama
Don’t shortchange the future, because of fear in the present. ~ Barack Obama
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
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
We can chart our future clearly and wisely only when we know the path which has led to the present. ~ Adlai Stevenson
Stop haunting your past and try to drop in on the future. ~ Antonio Tabucchi
Let the future tell the truth and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine. ~ Nikola Tesla
Whatever the future may bring, the universal application of these great principles is fully assured, though it may be long in coming. ~ Nikola Tesla
The highest human happiness is not the exploitation of the present but the preparation of the future. ~ Leon Trotsky
It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties. ~ Alfred North Whitehead
Countless choices define our fate: each choice, each moment, a moment in the ripple of time. Enough ripple, and you change the tide... for the future is never truly set. ~ Prof. Charles Xavier/Professor X
The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory. ~ Howard Zinn

A

  • "Don't tell me about the future." said Ford. "I've been all over the future. Spend half my time there. It's the same as anywhere else. Anywhen else. Whatever. Just the same old stuff in faster cars and smellier air."
  • Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

B

  • The generation which will come into active thought expression at the end of this century... will inaugurate the framework, structure and fabric of the New Age [of Aquarius], which will start with certain premises, which today are the dream of the more exalted dreamers, and which will develop the civilisatation... This coming age will be as predominantly the age of group interplay, group idealism, and group consciousness, as the Piscean Age has been one of personality unfoldment and emphasis, personality focus, and personality consciousness. Selfishness, as we now understand it, will gradually disappear, for the will of the individual will voluntarily be blended into the group will.
  • The ancient symbol for the sign Aquarius (into which our Sun is now entering) is that of the Water-carrier, the man with a pitcher of water. This passing of the Sun into the sign Aquarius is an astronomical fact... not an astrological prognostication. The great spiritual achievement and evolutionary event of that age will be the communion and human relationships established among all peoples, enabling men everywhere to sit down together... and share the bread and wine (symbols of nourishment). Preparations for that shared feast (symbolically speaking) are on their way, and those preparations are being made by the masses of men themselves, as they fight and struggle and legislate for the economic sustenance of their nations, and as the theme of food occupies the attention of legislators everywhere. This sharing, beginning on the physical plane, will prove equally true of all human relations and this will be the great gift of the Aquarian Age to humanity.
  • Energies emanating from... Aquarius... will (through the effect of its potent force) stimulate... men into a new coherency, into a brotherhood of humanity which will ignore all racial and national differences and will carry the life of men forward into synthesis and unity. This means a tide of unifying life of such power that one cannot now vision it, but which—in a thousand years—will have welded all mankind into a perfect brotherhood.
  • Many religions speak of the End of Days. It refers not to the end of the world, but rather the end of our current age – Pisces, which began at the time of Christ’s birth, spanned two thousand years, and waned with the passing of the millennium. Now that we’ve passed into the Age of Aquarius, the End of Days has arrived.
  • You can never plan the future by the past.
    • Edmund Burke, letter to a Member of the National Assembly, Volume IV, p. 55. Reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 304-06.
  • FUTURE, n. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.
    • Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).
  • People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it. Better yet, build it. Predicting the future is much too easy, anyway. You look at the people around you, the street you stand on, the visible air you breathe, and predict more of the same. To hell with more. I want better.
  • You can never plan the future by the past.
    • Edmund Burke, letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791).
  • I come before you and assume the Presidency at a moment rich with promise. We live in a peaceful, prosperous time, but we can make it better. For a new breeze is blowing, and a world refreshed by freedom seems reborn; for in man's heart, if not in fact, the day of the dictator is over. The totalitarian era is passing, its old ideas blown away like leaves from an ancient, lifeless tree. A new breeze is blowing, and a nation refreshed by freedom stands ready to push on. There is new ground to be broken, and new action to be taken. There are times when the future seems thick as a fog; you sit and wait, hoping the mists will lift and reveal the right path. But this is a time when the future seems a door you can walk right through into a room called tomorrow.
    Great nations of the world are moving toward democracy through the door to freedom. Men and women of the world move toward free markets through the door to prosperity. The people of the world agitate for free expression and free thought through the door to the moral and intellectual satisfactions that only liberty allows.
    We know what works: Freedom works. We know what's right: Freedom is right. We know how to secure a more just and prosperous life for man on Earth: through free markets, free speech, free elections, and the exercise of free will unhampered by the state.
  • I do not mistrust the future; I do not fear what is ahead. For our problems are large, but our heart is larger. Our challenges are great, but our will is greater. And if our flaws are endless, God's love is truly boundless.
     Some see leadership as high drama, and the sound of trumpets calling, and sometimes it is that. But I see history as a book with many pages, and each day we fill a page with acts of hopefulness and meaning. The new breeze blows, a page turns, the story unfolds. And so today a chapter begins, a small and stately story of unity, diversity, and generosity — shared, and written, together.

C

  • The future will soon be a thing of the past.
  • If you are living in the past or in the future, you will never find a meaning in the present.
    • Fausto Cercignani in Simply Transcribed : Quotations from Fausto Cercignani (2013) by Brian Morris, p. 9.
  • Our yesterdays present irreparable things to us; it is true that we have lost opportunities which will never return, but God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future. Let the past sleep, but let it sleep on the bosom of Christ. Leave the Irreparable Past in His hands, and step out into the Irresistible Future with Him.
  • The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
    • Winston Churchill, speech at Harvard University, September 6, 1943, in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations(1999), Knowles & Partington, p. 215.
  • Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.
  • I've seen the future, brother; it is murder.
  • The new politics will no longer be molded by the ‘isms’ of capitalism or socialism, but created from self-respect in individuals and nations.
  • Capitalism, in its pure form, is at an end in Europe. It has no future whatsoever. Instead, countries will model their governments on a form of democratic socialism. Gradually this will become the model for all nations as the most effective way to ensure that the voice and will of the people is properly represented.
    • Benjamin Creme Maitreya’s Mission Volume Two, Share International p. 131 (1993)
  • Capitalism without socialism is like a great shark in the waters that will eat up everything in sight, and has no group sense or social responsibility. We need to take the best of both systems and bring them together....a fusion of the best aspects of both. Both are necessary. The sense of justice, brotherhood and social caring... is necessary for the West, but the sense of freedom of the individual in movement, expression and thought is necessary in the East. That is something which will... gradually become the norm in Europe and eventually throughout the world.... not capitalism or communism, but social democracy or democratic socialism with full participation of all peoples in their own government.

D

  • Men will seem to see new destructions in the sky. The flames that fall from it will seem to rise in it and to fly from it with terror. They will hear every kind of animals speak in human language. They will instantaneously run in person in various parts of the world, without motion. They will see the greatest splendour in the midst of darkness. O! marvel of the human race! What madness has led you thus! You will speak with animals of every species and they with you in human speech. You will see yourself fall from great heights without any harm and torrents will accompany you, and will mingle with their rapid course.
    • Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XX Humorous Writings, as translated by Edward MacCurdy.
  • Take hold of the future or the future will take hold of you -- be futurewise.
  • Whatever the future may have in store for us, one thing is certain... Human thought will never go backward. When a great truth once gets abroad in the world, no power on earth can imprison it, or prescribe its limits, or suppress it. It is bound to go on till it becomes the thought of the world... Now that it has got fairly fixed in the minds of the few, it is bound to become fixed in the minds of the many, and be supported at last by a great cloud of witnesses, which no man can number and no power can withstand.
  • The only thing we know about the future is that it is going to be different.
    • Peter Drucker, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 1, Chapter 4.

E

  • I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
    • Albert Einstein, Attributed in The Encarta Book of Quotations to an interview on the Belgenland (December 1930), which was the ship on which he arrived in New York that month. According to The Ultimate Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice (2010), p. 18, the quote also appears as "Aphorism, 1945-1946" in the Einstein Archives 36-570. Calaprice speculates that "perhaps it was recalled later and inserted into the archives under the later date." According to a snippet on Google Books, the phrase '"I never think of the future," he said. "It comes soon enough."' appears in The Literary Digest: Volume 107 on p. 29, in an article titled "We May Not 'Get' Relativity, But We Like Einstein" from 27 December 1930. The snippet also discusses the "welcome to Professor Einstein on the Belgenland" in New York.
  • Your task is not to foresee the future, but to enable it.

F

  • It is one of our most exciting discoveries that local discovery leads to a complex of further discoveries. Corollary to this we find that we no sooner get a problem solved than we are overwhelmed with a multiplicity of additional problems in a most beautiful payoff of heretofore unknown, previously unrecognized, and as-yet unsolved problems.

Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path (1981)

(full text online)

  • Neither the great political and financial power structures of the world, nor the specialization-blinded professionals, nor the population in general realize... that it is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a higher standard of living than any have ever known.
  • It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary and henceforth unrationalizable as mandated by survival.
  • War is obsolete. It could never have been done before. Only ten years ago... technology reached the point where it could be done. Since then the invisible technological-capability revolution has made it ever easier so to do.
  • It is a matter of converting the high technology from weaponry to livingry. The essence of livingry is human-life advantaging and environment controlling. With the highest aeronautical and engineering facilities of the world redirected from weaponry to livingry production, all humanity would have the option of becoming enduringly successful.
  • All previous revolutions have been political—in them the have-not majority has attempted revengefully to pull down the economically advantaged minority. If realized, this historically greatest design revolution will joyously elevate all humanity to unprecedented heights.
  • All of humanity is in peril of extinction if each one of us does not dare, now and henceforth, always to tell only the truth, and all the truth, and to do so promptly — right now.
  • Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment. . . . Humanity is in ‘final exam’ as to whether or not it qualifies for continuance in Universe

G

  • I do not want to foresee the future. I am concerned with taking care of the present. God has given me no control over the moment following.
    • Mahatma Gandhi, in Anthony Parel Gandhi, Freedom, and Self-rule, Lexington Books, 1 January 2000, p. 59
  • If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
  • The Great Western Disease is that we fixate on the future at the expense of enjoying the life we're living now.
  • The greatest danger to our future is apathy.
    • Jane Goodall, "The Power of One", Time Magazine (August 26, 2002).
  • As I traveled, talking about these issues, I met so many young people who had lost hope. Some were depressed; some were apathetic; some were angry and violent. And when I talked to them, they all more or less felt this way because we had compromised their future and the world of tomorrow was not going to sustain their great-grandchildren.
  • Le futur n'est pas ce qui vient vers nous, mais ce vers quoi nous allons
    • The future is not what is coming at us, but what we are headed for.
    • Jean-Marie Guyau (Le Genèse de l'idée du temps), translation by Astragale.

H

  • Even if some different theory is discovered in the future, I don’t think time travel will ever be possible. If it were, we would have been overrun by tourists from the future by now.
  • Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today. It's been that way all this year. It's been that way so many times. All of war is that way.
  • In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.
    • Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition (1973), Section 32
  • The way I see it is that there're two types of people: those who spend their lives trying to build a future, and those who spend their lives trying to rebuild the past.
    • Dan Houser, Michael Unsworth, Rupert Humphries Max Payne 3.

J

  • I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past, — so good night!
  • The challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of our American civilization….
    The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning.
    The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.
    It is a place where man can renew contact with nature. It is a place which honors creation for its own sake and for what it adds to the understanding of the race. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.
    But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.
    • Lyndon B. Johnson, remarks at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (May 22, 1964). Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1963–64, book 1, p. 704.

K

  • The future is not laid out on a track. It is something that we can decide, and to the extent that we do not violate any known laws of the universe, we can probably make it work the way that we want to.
    • Alan Kay in 1984 in his paper Inventing the Future which appears in The AI Business: The Commercial Uses of Artificial Intelligence, edited by Patrick Henry Winston and Karen Prendergast.. As quoted by Eugene Wallingford in a post entitled ALAN KAY'S TALKS AT OOPSLA on November 06, 2004 9:03 PM at the website of the Computer Science section of the University of Northern Iowa.
  • For if Freedom and Communism were to compete for man's allegiance in a world at peace, I would look to the future with ever increasing confidence.
    • John F. Kennedy, State of the Union address, January 30, 1961. The Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1961, p. 23.
  • You know, you read about the future. You can't help that. I don't look upon the future. I am not a politician. I am not worried about the future at all. I don't like to run it down. I don't like to think of it being too dark because I expect to spend all the rest of my life there and I don't want to have a nasty end to it.
    • Charles Kettering, "Mr. Kettering's Talk", News and Views, General Motors Acceptance Corporation, General Exchange Insurance Corporation, Motors Insurance Corporation, 1936, p. 46
    • Variants:
      • I object to people running down the future. I am going to live all the rest of my life there, and I would like it to be a nice place, polished, bright, glistening, and glorious.
      • My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.
        • Common, since 1947; example: Instruments and Control Systems, Volume 20, 1947, p. 374
  • But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.
  • The future: a dark, desolate world. A world of war, suffering, loss on both sides. Mutants, and the humans who dared to help them, fighting an enemy we cannot defeat. Are we destined down this path, destined to destroy ourselves like so many species before us? Or can we evolve fast enough to change ourselves... change our fate? Is the future truly set? The past: a new and uncertain world. A world of endless possibilities and infinite outcomes. Countless choices define our fate: each choice, each moment, a moment in the ripple of time. Enough ripple, and you change the tide... for the future is never truly set.

L

  • Every feeling that looks to the future elevates human nature; for life is never so low or so little as when it concentrates itself on the present. The miserable wants, the small desires, and the petty pleasures of daily existence have nothing in common with those mighty dreams which, looking forward for action and action's reward, redeem the earth over which they walk with steps like those of an angel, beneath which spring up glorious and immortal flowers. The imagination is man's noblest and most spiritual faculty ; and that ever dwells on the to-come.
  • Not to the present is our hour confined,
    The great and shadowy future is assigned
    To be the glorious empire of the mind.

    The past was once the future, and it wrought
    In the high presence of on-looking thought ;
    All that we have, was by its efforts brought.

    To-day creates to-morrow, and the tree
    Of good or ill grows in past hours, what we
    Make for the future — certain is to be.
  • Yet this corporate being, though so insubstantial to our senses, binds, in Burke's words, a man to his country with "ties which though light as air, are as strong as links of iron." That is why young men die in battle for their country's sake and why old men plant trees they will never sit under.
    • Walter Lippmann, Essays in the Public Philosophy (1955), chapter 3, part 2, p. 36. The quotation is from Edmund Burke's speech on "Conciliation with America" (1775).
  • The more you observe life in relation to yourself the more you will see the fact that you are hardly ever correct when you think about something in the future. The future exists only in imagination; and that is why, no matter how hard you try to imagine it, you will not be able to predict the future with total certainty.
  • Look not mournfully into the Past; it comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present; it is thine.
    Go forth to meet the shadowy Future without fear and with a manly heart.

M

  • Dynamic systems studies usually are not designed to predict what will happen. Rather, they're designed to explore what would happen, if a number of driving factors unfold in a range of different ways.

N

  • If someone who knew the future, pointed out a child to you and told you that that child would grow up totally evil, to be a ruthless dictator who would destroy millions of lives... could you then kill that child?

O

  • We did not come to fear the future. We came here to shape it.
    • Barack Obama, In aspeech to joint session of Congress, (september. 9, 2009).
  • Can omniscient God, who
    Knows the future, find
    The Omnipotence to
    Change His future mind?

P

  • The past and future are veiled; but the past wears the widow's veil; the future, the virgin's.
    • Jean Paul, as quoted in Treasury of Thought (1872) by Maturin M. Ballou, p. 521.
  • Whenever the rate of return on capital is significantly and durably higher than the growth rate of the economy, it is all but inevitable that inheritance (of fortunes accumulated in the past) predominates over saving (wealth accumulated in the present). ... The inequality r > g in one sense implies that the past tends to devour the future: wealth originating in the past automatically grows more rapidly, even without labor, than wealth stemming from work, which can be saved. Almost inevitably, this tends to give lasting disproportionate importance to inequalities created in the past, and therefore to inheritance.
  • We have no right to assume that any physical laws exist, or if they have existed up until now, that they will continue to exist in a similar manner in the future.
    • Max Planck, The Universe in the Light of Modern Physics (1931).

R

  • 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 (1991).
  • The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
    • Eleanor Roosevelt, as quoted in Leonard C. Schlup and Donald W. Whisenhunt, It Seems to Me: Selected Letters of Eleanor Roosevelt (2001), p. 2.
  • The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.
    • Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1944–45 (1950), p. 616, which states: "This is the latest draft of the President's proposed speech [for Jefferson Day, April 13, 1945]. The last sentence [quoted above] was written into the typed draft in his own hand. The draft was not the final one; the preparation of the final draft was prevented by death."
  • Having granted the excellence of these maxims, I come to certain points in which I do not believe that one can grant either the superlative wisdom or the superlative goodness of Christ as depicted in the Gospels... there one does find some things that do not seem to be very wise. For one thing, he certainly thought that His second coming would occur in clouds of glory before the death of all the people who were living at that time. There are a great many texts that prove that. He says, for instance, "Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of Man be come." Then he says, "There are some standing here which shall not taste death till the Son of Man comes into His kingdom"; and there are a lot of places where it is quite clear that He believed that His second coming would happen during the lifetime of many then living. That was the belief of His earlier followers, and it was the basis of a good deal of His moral teaching. When He said, "Take no thought for the morrow," and things of that sort, it was very largely because He thought that the second coming was going to be very soon, and that all ordinary mundane affairs did not count. I have, as a matter of fact, known some Christians who did believe that the second coming was imminent. I knew a parson who frightened his congregation terribly by telling them that the second coming was very imminent indeed, but they were much consoled when they found that he was planting trees in his garden. The early Christians did really believe it, and they did abstain from such things as planting trees in their gardens, because they did accept from Christ the belief that the second coming was imminent. In that respect, clearly He was not so wise as some other people have been, and He was certainly not superlatively wise.
    • Bertrand Russell, Why I am not a Christian (1927), "Defects in Christ's Teaching".

S

  • If you can look into the seeds of time,
    And say which grain will grow and which will not;
    Speak then to me.
  • To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
  • "So you've been over into Russia?" said Bernard Baruch, and I answered very literally, "I have been over into the future and it works."
    • Lincoln Steffens, The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens (1931, reprinted 1958), vol. 2, chapter 18, p. 799. Steffens had made his second trip to Russia in 1919, as part of a mission sent by President Woodrow Wilson.
  • With the way the world’s going a nuclear Iran is going to be the least of our problems in 10 or 15 years. Iranian nukes will be a break from swimming through our climate-change flooded cities fighting ebola zombies with our teeth because we can’t hold guns thanks to our iPhone-shaped hand tumors.
  • We can chart our future clearly and wisely only when we know the path which has led to the present.
  • ....another vision, where water still curled on the sandy beach beneath a clear blue sky where birds flew, but their patterns were mathematics precise beyond his comprehension. A man walked between buildings that were perfect, and empty. He turned to look at Rudi for an instant and where his eyes should have been were silvery tendrils that waved and sought.

T

  • ...stop haunting your past and try to drop in on the future.
  • This is really odd that economists are expected to predict the future, because no on expect other people in other disciplines to predict the future. Nobody says to the biologists: What is the next stage in evolution? If you can't expect the next stage in evolution... well I guess biology just isn't a science and, that no one should listen to you. Nobody says to the political scientist: Well... you know, who is going to win the next election? If you can't tell me now, then I guess, you know, political science does not mean anything. But somehow economics takes this burden, that people in economics are supposed to be able to forecast the future.
    • Timothy Taylor, in Economics, 3rd Edition (The Great Courses) (2008), Chapter 1: "How Economists Think."
  • Let the future tell the truth and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine.
    • Nikola Tesla, On patent controversies regarding the invention of Radio and other things, as quoted in "A Visit to Nikola Tesla" by Dragislav L. Petković in Politika (April 1927); as quoted in Tesla, Master of Lightning (1999) by Margaret Cheney, Robert Uth, and Jim Glenn, p. 73 ISBN 0760710058 ; also in Tesla: Man Out of Time (2001) by Margaret Cheney, p. 230 ISBN 0743215362 .
  • I have obtained... spark discharges extending through more than one hundred feet and carrying currents of one thousand amperes, electromotive forces approximating twenty million volts, chemically active streamers covering areas of several thousand square feet, and electrical disturbances in the natural media surpassing those caused by lightning, in intensity.
    Whatever the future may bring, the universal application of these great principles is fully assured, though it may be long in coming. With the opening of the first power plant, incredulity will give way to wonderment, and this to ingratitude, as ever before.
  • The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter — for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way. He lives and labors and hopes.
    • Nikola Tesla, "Radio Power Will Revolutionize the World" in Modern Mechanics and Inventions (July 1934).
  • Man remains in the end what he started as in the beginning: a biosystem with a limited capacity for change. When this capacity is overwhelmed, the consequence is future shock.
  • Be it even over our bleaching bones the truth will triumph! We will blaze the trail for it. It will conquer! Under all the severe blows of fate, I shall be happy as in the best days of my youth! Because, my friends, the highest human happiness is not the exploitation of the present but the preparation of the future.

W

  • The nation is burdened with the heavy curse on those who come afterwards. The generation before us was inspired by an activism and a naive enthusiasm, which we cannot rekindle, because we confront tasks of a different kind from those which our fathers faced.
    • Max Weber, address to convention of the Verein für Socialpolitik, Germany, 1893; reported in Reinhard Bendix, Max Weber (1960), p. 53.
  • You can't fuck the future. The future fucks you! It catches up with you and it fucks you if you ain't planned for it!
    • Norman Wexler, through the main character Tony Manero in the motion picture Saturday Night Fever (1978).
  • My visions of the future are always pretty much standard issue. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer... and there are flying cars.
    • Joss Whedon TV Guide (27 December – 2 January 2004), and Foreword to Fray
  • It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.
  • My clients are the children; my clients are the next generation. They do not know what promises and bonds I undertook when I ordered the armies of the United States to the soil of France, but I know, and I intend to redeem my pledges to the children; they shall not be sent upon a similar errand.
    • Woodrow Wilson, address in Pueblo, Colorado (September 25, 1919); reported in Albert Shaw, ed., The Messages and Papers of Woodrow Wilson (1924), vol. 2, p. 1127.

X

  • The future, for tomorrow belongs only to the people who prepare for it today.
    • Malcolm X, Speech at Founding Rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (28 June 1964), as quoted in By Any Means Necessary (1970).

Z

  • To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
    • Howard Zinn, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress, p. 270.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 304-06.
  • That what will come, and must come, shall come well.
  • Making all futures fruits of all the pasts.
  • Some day Love shall claim his own
    Some day Right ascend his throne,
    Some day hidden Truth be known;
    Some day—some sweet day.
    • Lewis J. Bates, Some Sweet Day.
  • The year goes wrong, and tares grow strong,
    Hope starves without a crumb;
    But God's time is our harvest time,
    And that is sure to come.
    • Lewis J. Bates, Our Better Day.
  • Dear Land to which Desire forever flees;
    Time doth no present to our grasp allow,
    Say in the fixed Eternal shall we seize
    At last the fleeting Now?
  • You can never plan the future by the past.
    • Edmund Burke, letter to a Member of the National Assembly, Volume IV, p. 55.
  • With mortal crisis doth portend,
    My days to appropinque an end.
  • 'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,
    And coming events cast their shadows before.
  • Certis rebus certa signa præcurrunt.
    • Certain signs precede certain events.
    • Cicero, De Divinatione, I. 52.
  • So often do the spirits
    Of great events stride on before the events,
    And in to-day already walks to-morrow.
  • There shall be no more snow
    No weary noontide heat,
    So we lift our trusting eyes
    From the hills our Fathers trod:
    To the quiet of the skies:
    To the Sabbath of our God.
  • Quid sit futurum cras, fuge quærere: et

Quem Fors dierum cunque dabit, lucro
Appone.

    • Cease to inquire what the future has in store, and to take as a gift whatever the day brings forth.
    • Horace, Carmina, I. 9. 13.
  • Prudens futuri temporis exitum
    Caliginosa nocte premit deus.
    • A wise God shrouds the future in obscure darkness.
    • Horace, Carmina, III. 29. 29.
  • You'll see that, since our fate is ruled by chance,
    Each man, unknowing, great,
    Should frame life so that at some future hour
    Fact and his dreamings meet.
  • With whom there is no place of toil, no burning heat, no piercing cold, nor any briars there … this place we call the Bosom of Abraham.
    • Josephus, Discourse to the Greeks concerning Hades. Homer, Odyssey, VI. 42.
  • When Earth's last picture is painted, and the tubes are twisted and dried,
    When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died,
    We shall rest, and faith, we shall need it—lie down for an æon or two,
    Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall set us to work anew.
  • Le présent est gros de l'avenir.
    • The present is big with the future.
    • Leibnitz.
  • There's a good time coming, boys;
    A good time coming:
    We may not live to see the day,
    But earth shall glisten in the ray
    Of the good time coming.
    Cannon-balls may aid the truth,
    But thought's a weapon stronger;
    We'll win our battle by its aid,
    Wait a little longer.
  • The future is a world limited by ourselves; in it we discover only what concerns us and, sometimes, by chance, what interests those whom we love the most.
  • Take therefore no thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
    • Matthew, VI. 34.
  • The wave of the future is coming and there is no fighting it.
  • There was the Door to which I found no key;
    There was the Veil through which I might not see.
  • Venator sequitur fugientia; capta relinquit;
    Semper et inventis ulteriora petit.
    • The hunter follows things which flee from him; he leaves them when they are taken; and ever seeks for that which is beyond what he has found.
    • Ovid, Amorum (16 BC), Book II. 9. 9.
  • Ludit in humanis divina potentia rebus,
    Et certam præsens vix habet hora fidem.
    • Heaven makes sport of human affairs, and the present hour gives no sure promise of the next.
    • Ovid, Epistolæ Ex Ponto, IV. 3. 49.
  • Nos duo turba sumus.
    • We two [Deucalion and Pyrrha, after the deluge] form a multitude.
    • Ovid, Metamorphoses, I. 355.
  • Après nous le déluge.
    • After us the deluge.
    • Mme. Pompadour. After the battle of Rossbach. See Larousse, Fleurs Historiques. Madame de Hausset, Memoirs. (Ed. 1824), p. 19. Also attributed to Louis XV by the French. Compare Cicero, De Finibus, XI. 16.
  • Oh, blindness to the future! kindly giv'n,
    That each may fill the circle mark'd by heaven.
  • In adamantine chains shall Death be bound,
    And Hell's grim tyrant feel th' eternal wound.
  • And better skilled in dark events to come.
  • Etwas fürchten und hoffen und sorgen,
    Muss der Mensch für den kommenden Morgen.
    • Man must have some fears, hopes, and cares, for the coming morrow.
    • Friedrich Schiller, Die Braut von Messina.
  • But there's a gude time coming.
  • Calamitosus est animus futuri anxius.
    • The mind that is anxious about the future is miserable.
    • Seneca the Younger, Epistolæ Ad Lucilium, XCVIII.
  • How many ages hence
    Shall this our lofty scene be acted over
    In states unborn and accents yet unknown.
  • God, if Thy will be so,
    Enrich the time to come with smooth-faced peace,
    With smiling plenty and fair prosperous days!
  • Quid crastina volveret ætas,
    Scire nefas homini.
    • Man is not allowed to know what will happen to-morrow.
    • Statius, Thebais, III. 562.
  • When the Rudyards cease from Kipling
    And the Haggards ride no more.
    • J. K. Stephen, Lapsus Calami.
  • When I am dead let the earth be dissolved in fire.
    • Suetonius. Quoting Nero. Nero. 38. Quoted by Milton from Tiberius in his Church Government, Book I, Chapter V. Tiberius, quoting an unknown Greek poet. See note of Leutsch, Appendix II. 56, to Proverbs LVIII. 23. Euripides, Fragment Inc. B, XXVII.
  • Till the sun grows cold,
    And the stars are old,
    And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold.
  • Istuc est sapere, non quod ante pedes modo est
    Videre, sed etiam illa, quæ futura sunt
    Prospicere.
    • That is to be wise to see not merely that which lies before your feet, but to foresee even those things which are in the womb of futurity.
    • Terence, Adelphi, III. 3. 32.
  • I hear a voice you cannot hear,
    Which says, I must not stay;
    I see a hand you cannot see,
    Which beckons me away.
  • Dabit deus his quoque finem.
    • God will put an end to these also.
    • Virgil, Æneid (29-19 BC), I. 199.

Misattributed

  • Oogway: Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the "present".
    • Jonathan Aibel and Glen Berger, Kung Fu Panda, (2008).
      • "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is mystery, Today is God's gift, that's why we call it the present." (Regarded as an "anonymous poem", in Joan Chittister's Heart of Flesh (1998), p. 129; in Vital Issues: The Journal of African American Speeches (1998), Bethune-DuBois Publications, p. 27, and in Joan Rivers' "From Mother to Daughter" (1998), p. 30.)
      • "Yesterday may be History, Tomorrow is Mystery and Today is our Golden Opportunity!" (As quoted in H.S. Cheesbrough's Canada Lumberman, Volume 62 (1942), Southam-Maclean.
      • "Live today. The past is gone. Today is God's gift to us, whether it be a day of storm or sunshine. Tomorrow may never come, and that is immaterial." (From Friends' Intelligencer, Volume 91, No.1-26 (1934), p. 21)
      • "Yesterday is history; to-morrow is merely a hope; to-day is the only absolute asset of time that is yours." From Frank Pixley's Thoughts and Things (1912), in , Duffield & Company, p. 29.

See also

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