Quotes about the future

Telling the future is what organisms are for.

A coldly rationalist individualist can deny that he has any obligation to make sacrifices for the future. By contrast, those who, for whatever reason, regard the resources at their disposal as an inheritance from the past that they feel obliged to pass on to their descendants, have a better chance of producing future generations prosperous enough to be able to continue to wrestle with the problems of increasing the quality of life.

Ah! my Belovéd, fill the Cup that clears

To-day of past Regrets and future Fears —

To-morrow?—Why, To-morrow I may be

Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n Thousand Years.

Spend all your time thinkin’ ’bout tomorrow, you ain’t gonna live to git there.

'Tain't worthwhile to wear a day all out before it comes.

A man may not face both ways at once. If he looks back, he cannot look forward.

Time past was nothing, no matter how long. Time ahead was everything, no matter how brief.

He looked upon the time that had been my future in a disturbing way. My future was his past, and being young, he was indifferent to the past.

Live in the present, remember the past, and fear not the future, for it doesn't exist and never shall. There is only now.

We are the most fortunate generation that has ever lived. And we are the most fortunate generation that ever will.

He who foresees calamities suffers them twice over.

It might be thought that the I Ching and the oracles are metaphysical while the computer model is "real"; but the fact remains that a machine to foretell the future is based on metaphysical assumptions of a very definite kind. It is based on the implicit assumption that "the future is already here," that it exists already in a determinate form, that it requires merely good instruments and good techniques to get it into focus and make it visible. The reader will agree that this is a very far-reaching metaphysical assumption which seems to go against all direct personal experience.