quotations about the future
A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
"My Future Plans,", The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein
The story of the future is written in the past, and that which hath been is the same thing that shall be.
LORD ACTON
The History of Freedom in Christianity
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
foreword, Fray
The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented.
DENNIS GABOR
Inventing the Future
Of the future, man knows least; yet, about this, he worries most.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
You should never fast-forward into the future. Because every time you do, you rob yourself of the journey, the present moment, which, in the end, is all there really is.
ALYSON NOËL
Blue Moon
I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.
GEORGE ELIOT
The Mill on the Floss
You glorify the past
When the future dries up.
U2
"God Part II"
The future is like smoke from a burning forest, waiting for the wind of specific events and personal courage to blow the sparks and embers of reality this way or that.
DAN SIMMONS
The Rise of Endymion
You don't need to predict the future. Just choose a future -- a good future, a useful future -- and make the kind of prediction that will alter human emotions and reactions in such a way that the future you predicted will be brought about. Better to make a good future than predict a bad one.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Prelude to Foundation
Tomorrow may never come to us. We do not live in tomorrow. We cannot find it in any of our title-deeds. The man who owns whole blocks of real estate, and great ships on the sea, does not own a single minute of tomorrow. Tomorrow! It is a mysterious possibility, not yet born. It lies under the seal of midnight--behind the veil of glittering constellations.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
While we may open the books of the past, we may but grant flying glances of the future, through the mist that veils it.
ROBERT E. HOWARD
Kull: Exile of Atlantis
Our eyes are always blind when they view the future.
KELLY LINK
Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories
You can't really predict the future. All you can do is invent it.
FREDERIK POHL
"Science Fiction's Hidden Hero"
The past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions.
ECKHART TOLLE
The Power of Now
The golden age is not in the past, but in the future; not in the origin of human experience, but in its consummate flower; not opening in Eden, but out from Gethsemane.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
One might as well attempt to calculate mathematically the contingent forms of the tinkling bits of glass in a kaleidoscope as to look through the tube of the future and foretell its pattern.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Total self-confidence is built through positive expectations. You can build positive expectations by knowing that you have the power within to overcome any obstacle that lies ahead. So many people have a magnetic attraction to the past. They save momentos, clippings, old letters, and trivia. There is nothing wrong with this, but if you want to succeed, your mind must focus on where you are going, not on where you have been. Instead of saving momentos, clippings, old letters, and trivia from the past, it would be more productive to make a scrapbook with pictures of where you want to go and what you want to be in the future.
ROBERT ANTHONY
The Ultimate Secrets of Total Self-Confidence
Change is the process by which the future invades our lives.
ALVIN TOFFLER
Future Shock
Every second that passes is like a door that opens to allow in what has not yet happened, what we call the future, but, to challenge the contradictory nature of what we have just said, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the future is just an immense void, that the future is just the time on which the eternal present feeds.
JOSé SARAMAGO
The Double