Future/Quotes

Quotes on Futurology

• “The future is unknown only because it has not been created yet. Create your own path, even in this troubled world, for we will not succeed in life if we follow another’s footsteps.” ~ The Shadow Dragon
• "The future is not something we enter. The future is something we create." ~ Leonard I. Sweet
• "If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one." ~ John Galsworthy
• "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 best way to predict the future is to invent it." ~ Theodore Hook
• "The only way you can predict the future is to build it." ~ Alan Kay
• "The future belongs to those who prepare for it today." ~ Malcolm X
• "Go for it now. The future is promised to no one." ~ Wayne Dyer
• "Take hold of the future or the future will take hold of you By be futurewise." ~ Patrick Dixon, Futurist and author Futurewise 1998/2005
• "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." ~ Ray Bradbury, from Beyond 1984: The People Machines
• "I never think of the future, it comes soon enough." ~ Albert Einstein
• "The vast possibilities of our great future will become realities only if we make ourselves responsible for that future." ~ Gifford Pinchot
• "It was never easy to look into the future, but it is possible and we should not miss our chance." ~ Andrei Linde
• "It's hard to make predictions By especially about the future." ~ Robert Storm Petersen
• "Run to meet the future or it's going to run you down." ~ Anthony J. D'Angelo
• "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
• "Once you have glimpsed the world as it might be, it is impossible to live anymore complacent in the world as it is." ~ Anonymous
• "If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible he is almost certainly right, but if he says that it is impossible he is very probably wrong." ~ Arthur C. Clarke
• "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
• "We are prisoners of our own metaphors, metaphorically speaking..." ~ R. Buckminster Fuller
• "A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future." ~ Sidney J. Harris

Quotes on the Future

• "The future is not something to predict. The future is something to build." ~ Franco Ongaro @ESA
• "Thou knowest the past but not the future. As to what is future, even a bird with a long neck can not see it, but God only." ~ Anonymous
• "The future is made of the same stuff as the present." ~ Simone Weil
• "The choices we make today create the future that we are dreaming of" ~ Kapil tetarwal
• "The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed." ~ William Gibson from The Economist, 12/4/2003
• Alternate: "The future has already happened, it just isn't very well distributed." ~ William Gibson
• "The future has a way of arriving unannounced." ~ George Will
• "I've seen the future, brother; it is murder." ~ Leonard Cohen
• "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, 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." ~ William Shakespeare, from Macbeth
• "The future will be a better tomorrow." ~ Dan Quayle
• "Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future."By Charles F. Kettering
• "Most of our future lies ahead." ~ Denny Crum
• "Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday."By John Wayne
• "The future will soon be a thing of the past." ~ George Carlin
• The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read or write; they will be those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. ~ Alvin Toffler
• "The future always arrives too fast... and in the wrong order."By Alvin Toffler, futurologist and writer
• "The empires of the future are the empires of the mind." ~ Winston Churchill
• "Let your hopes, not your hurts, shape your future." ~ Robert H. Schuller

Quotes on Futurologists

• "If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one." ~ John Galsworthy
• "Two things make a great futurist; a fascination and interest in change and you don’t want to get an MBA." ~Peter Bishop Ph.D., futurist
• "In George Bush you get experience, and with me you get By The Future!" ~ Dan Quayle, from LA Times 10/19/88
• "For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be." ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson
• "I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future." ~ Dan Quayle
• "The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine." ~ Nikola Tesla
• "I'm looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can't be done." ~ Henry Ford

Quotes on Innovation

• "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." ~ Henry Ford
• "As the births of living creatures, at first, are ill-shapen: so are all Innovations, which are the births of time." ~ Francis Bacon
• "We must beware of needless innovation, especially when guided By logic." ~ Winston Churchill
• "An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way By gradually winning over and converting its opponents: What does happen is that the opponents gradually die out." ~ Max Planck
• "Too often we forget that genius, too, depends upon the data within its reach, that even Archimedes could not have devised Edison's inventions." ~ Ernest Dimnet
• "Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be a criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached." ~ Werner Karl Heisenberg
• "Keep on the lookout for novel ideas that others have used successfully. Your idea has to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you're working on." ~ Thomas Edison
• "I have more respect for the fellow with a single idea who gets there than for the fellow with a thousand ideas who does nothing." ~ Thomas Edison
• "The future is not something which happens By just waiting for time to pass. And if you want to be assured of a life after death, you have to build it yourself." ~ Sam Hughes
• "Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower." ~ Steve Jobs

Quotes on the Past

• "You can never plan the future By the past." ~ Edmund Burke
• "Telling the future By looking at the past assumes that conditions remain constant. This is like driving a car By looking in the rearview mirror." ~ Herb Brody
• "Those who stare at the past have their backs turned to the future." ~ Anonymous
• "Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future." ~ John F. Kennedy
• "One problem with gazing too frequently into the past is that we may turn around to find the future has run out on us." ~ Michael Cibenko
• "Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past, Wisdom is of the future." ~ American Indian Proverbs
• "Don't be stuck on same routine, always follow diversity." ~ Akhtar Aly Kureshy

Quotes on Miscellaneous Topics

• "Man has a limited biological capacity for change. When this capacity is overwhelmed, the capacity is in future shock." ~ Alvin Toffler
• "It don't matter as long as you get where you're going, cause none of the shit is going to mean shit where we're going." ~ Eminem
• "If you can dream By and not make dreams your master." ~ Rudyard Kipling

See also

• Future on Wikiquote