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 ain't what it used to be.
YOGI BERRA
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 is not an inheritance, it is an opportunity and an obligation.
BILL CLINTON
Coming events cast their shadows before.
JAMES JOYCE
Ulysses
The present is the food of the future.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow and which will not;
Speak then to me.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Mabeth
Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and with a manly heart.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Hyperion
The future is still unspoiled.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
A Long Fatal Love Chase
We're not responsible for the world we're born into. Only for the world we leave when we die. So we have to accept what's gone before us in the past, and work to change the only thing we can--the future.
WILLIAM SHATNER
The Ashes of Eden
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
What sense is there in continuing when one has seen the future?
ALAN LIGHTMAN
Einstein's Dreams
Tomorrow will be a new day.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Don Quixote
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"
The best is always yet to come.
BOB DYLAN
"If Dogs Run Free"
The best way to predict your future is to create it.
ROBERT ANTHONY
Think Big
Perhaps the safest prediction we can make about the future is that it will surprise us.
GEORGE LEONARD
The Silent Pulse
Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today.
AYN RAND
The Romantic Manifesto
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
The future will soon be a thing of the past.
GEORGE CARLIN
Napalm and Silly Putty