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