quotations about the future
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 best is always yet to come.
BOB DYLAN
"If Dogs Run Free"
We are all engaged in looting the past. (Only the greatest geniuses manage to steal from the future.)
DONALD BARTHELME
"The Emerging Figure"
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
The future remains uncertain and so it should, for it is the canvas upon which we paint our desires. Thus always the human condition faces a beautifully empty canvas.
FRANK HERBERT
Children of Dune
The future will soon be a thing of the past.
GEORGE CARLIN
Napalm and Silly Putty
Coming events cast their shadows before.
JAMES JOYCE
Ulysses
In a world without future, each parting of friends is a death. In a world without future, each loneliness is final. In a world without future, each laugh is the last laugh. In a world without future, beyond the present lies nothingness, and people cling to the present as if hanging from a cliff.
ALAN LIGHTMAN
Einstein's Dreams
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
This is the first age that's ever paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since we may not have one.
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
attributed, The Peter Plan: A Proposal for Survival
The future was a time that called into question everything that came before it.
IVAN KLIMA
Waiting for the Dark
He only is anxious about the future, to whom the present is unprofitable.
SENECA
Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales
Learn to recognize the future the way a Steersman identifies guiding stars and corrects the course of his vessel. Learn from the past; never use it as an anchor.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
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
You can't see the future, there's no such thing. It's all bets. You'll never get the same answer from two seers. But that doesn't mean either of them's wrong.
CHINA MIéVILLE
Kraken
Man is better without knowledge of things to come, for what is to be will be, and man can neither avert nor hasten. It is better to go in the dark when the road must pass a lion and there is no other road.
ROBERT E. HOWARD
Kull: Exile of Atlantis
You can never plan the future by the past.
EDMUND BURKE
letter to a Member of the National Assembly
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"
We are always looking into the future, but we see only the past.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Airelles," The Writings of Madame Swetchine
The future is still unspoiled.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
A Long Fatal Love Chase