quotations about the future
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
It is today that we must create the world of the future.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
Tomorrow Is Now
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
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 present is the food of the future.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
What sense is there in continuing when one has seen the future?
ALAN LIGHTMAN
Einstein's Dreams
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
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
There is no present or future, only the past, happening over and over again, now.
EUGENE O'NEILL
A Moon for the Misbegotten
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
The best is always yet to come.
BOB DYLAN
"If Dogs Run Free"
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
Coming events cast their shadows before.
JAMES JOYCE
Ulysses
We have annexed the future into the present, as merely one of those manifold alternatives open to us. Options multiply around us, and we live in an almost infantile world where any demand, any possibility, whether for life-styles, travel, sexual roles and identities, can be satisfied instantly.
J. G. BALLARD
Crash
Tomorrow will be a new day.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Don Quixote
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 all engaged in looting the past. (Only the greatest geniuses manage to steal from the future.)
DONALD BARTHELME
"The Emerging Figure"
There is no PAST anybody can get to, to alter things or even to know what those things were but there is definitely a future, we are already in it.
JOYCE CAROL OATES
Zombie