FUTURE QUOTES III

quotations about the future

The future was always more important than the past.

PAUL PARK

A Princess of Roumania


When then things to come are said to be seen, it is not themselves which as yet are not (that is, which are to be), but their causes perchance or signs are seen, which already are.

ST. AUGUSTINE

Confessions


I've seen the future and the future's nothing new.

THE ALTERNATE ROUTES

"The Future's Nothing New"


There is no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles.

D. H. LAWRENCE

Lady Chatterley's Lover


Nothing dates harder and faster and more strangely than the future.

NEIL GAIMAN

foreword, The Stars My Destination


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


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


To ordain the future in advance in this way, man must first have learned to distinguish necessary events from chance ones, to think causally, to see and anticipate distant eventualities as if they belonged to the present, to decide with certainty what is the goal and what the means to it, and in general be able to calculate and compute.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Genealogy of Morals


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


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


Change is the process by which the future invades our lives.

ALVIN TOFFLER

Future Shock


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

Science and the Modern World


Our eyes are always blind when they view the future.

KELLY LINK

Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories


Welcome to the future.... All our tragedies and triumphs, our lives and deaths, our shames and joys are just stuffing for your emptiness.

IAIN M. BANKS

Matter


Don't tell me about the future. 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.

DOUGLAS ADAMS

Mostly Harmless


The future is not google-able.

WILLIAM GIBSON

comments at A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books, Feb. 5, 2004


The future must be met, however stern and iron it be.

ELIZABETH GASKELL

North and South


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


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