FUTURE QUOTES V

quotations about the future

The future is not an inheritance, it is an opportunity and an obligation.

BILL CLINTON


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

BILL WATTERSON

Calvin and Hobbes


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 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


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

BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON

The Butlerian Jihad


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


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

SENECA

Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales


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


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

IVAN KLIMA

Waiting for the Dark


The future ain't what it used to be.

YOGI BERRA


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

EUGENE O'NEILL

A Moon for the Misbegotten


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


Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today.

AYN RAND

The Romantic Manifesto


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 will soon be a thing of the past.

GEORGE CARLIN

Napalm and Silly Putty


You can never plan the future by the past.

EDMUND BURKE

letter to a Member of the National Assembly