FUTURE QUOTES V

quotations about the future

We did not come to fear the future. We came here to shape it.

BARACK OBAMA

speech to joint session of Congress, sep. 9, 2009


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

BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON

The Butlerian Jihad


We are all engaged in looting the past. (Only the greatest geniuses manage to steal from the future.)

DONALD BARTHELME

"The Emerging Figure"


The future remains uncertain and so it should, for it is the canvas upon which we paint our desires. Thus always the human condition faces a beautifully empty canvas.

FRANK HERBERT

Children of Dune


I saw the days of the year stretching ahead like a series of bright, white boxes, and separating one box from another was sleep, like a black shade. Only for me, the long perspective of shades that set off one box from the next day had suddenly snapped up, and I could see day after day after day glaring ahead of me like a white, broad, infinitely desolate avenue.

SYLVIA PLATH

The Bell Jar


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


What sense is there in continuing when one has seen the future?

ALAN LIGHTMAN

Einstein's Dreams


The future is not always a whole new ball game. There tends to be unfinished business. One trails all sorts of things around with one, things that simply won't be got rid of.

ANITA BROOKNER

Lewis Percy


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


You can't see the future, there's no such thing. It's all bets. You'll never get the same answer from two seers. But that doesn't mean either of them's wrong.

CHINA MIéVILLE

Kraken


Coming events cast their shadows before.

JAMES JOYCE

Ulysses


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

TRACY LETTS

August: Osage Country


The future ain't what it used to be.

YOGI BERRA


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


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"


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


We are always looking into the future, but we see only the past.

MADAME SWETCHINE

"Airelles," The Writings of Madame Swetchine


Man is better without knowledge of things to come, for what is to be will be, and man can neither avert nor hasten. It is better to go in the dark when the road must pass a lion and there is no other road.

ROBERT E. HOWARD

Kull: Exile of Atlantis


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

BILL WATTERSON

Calvin and Hobbes


Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and with a manly heart.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Hyperion