FUTURE QUOTES V

quotations about the future

He only is anxious about the future, to whom the present is unprofitable.

SENECA

Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales


It is not the present which unfluences the future, thou fool, but the future which forms the present. You have it all backward. Since the future is set, an unfolding of events which will assure that future is fixed and inevitable.

FRANK HERBERT

Children of Dune


Rational behavior ... depends upon a ceaseless flow of data from the environment. It depends upon the power of the individual to predict, with at least a fair success, the outcome of his own actions. To do this, he must be able to predict how the environment will respond to his acts. Sanity, itself, thus hinges on man's ability to predict his immediate, personal future on the basis of information fed him by the environment.

ALVIN TOFFLER

Future Shock


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


The future? I hate it because I will not be there.

BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON

The Butlerian Jihad


The future ain't what it used to be.

YOGI BERRA


Whether we shape the future in the image of our hopes, is ours to determine by our actions and our choices.

RICHARD NIXON

Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1969


The best is always yet to come.

BOB DYLAN

"If Dogs Run Free"


The future is still unspoiled.

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

A Long Fatal Love Chase


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


The problem with the future is that it keeps turning into the present.

BILL WATTERSON

Calvin and Hobbes


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


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"


There is no present or future, only the past, happening over and over again, now.

EUGENE O'NEILL

A Moon for the Misbegotten


The past and future are veiled; but the past wears the widow's veil; the future, the virgin's.

JEAN PAUL

Treasury of Thought


Coming events cast their shadows before.

JAMES JOYCE

Ulysses


The future was a time that called into question everything that came before it.

IVAN KLIMA

Waiting for the Dark


Thank God we can't tell the future. We'd never get out of bed.

TRACY LETTS

August: Osage Country


In a world without future, each parting of friends is a death. In a world without future, each loneliness is final. In a world without future, each laugh is the last laugh. In a world without future, beyond the present lies nothingness, and people cling to the present as if hanging from a cliff.

ALAN LIGHTMAN

Einstein's Dreams


The future will soon be a thing of the past.

GEORGE CARLIN

Napalm and Silly Putty