Quotes about prophecies

Cumulative errors depend largely on the big surprises, the big opportunities. Not only do economic, financial, and political predictors miss them, but they are quite ashamed to say anything outlandish to their clients — and yet events, it turns out, are almost always outlandish.

Mixing forecast and prophecy is symptomatic of randomness-foolishness...

A... vicious effect of... is that those that are good at predicting the past... think of themselves as good at predicting the future... [W]e live in a world where important events are not predictable...

“You must be a prophet right enough,” said Alvin Junior, “cause I can’t understand a thing you said.”

“I don’t hold with prophets,” said Alvin. “Near as I can tell, they end up just as dead as the next man.”