quotations about the future
The future? I hate it because I will not be there.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
The Butlerian Jihad
God, in His great and infinite widsom, never intended that we should see into futurity, for had He gifted us with the power, it would have led to numberless cases of self-destruction. Who, that has gone through trials and troubles without number, in his weary journey and pilgrimage through this world of trial and woe, had he seen these trials and troubles in the bright and sunny days of his youth, could have lived to face them? Not one in a hundred. What mother, when gazing over her first born infant with pride, rapture, and delight beaming through the windows of her soul, could have believed that that child of hers would one day shut the door on her; or that he would stagger home, a rogue, liar, and confirmed drunkard? What blushing bride, leaving the altar with the husband of her choice, the man who has sworn before God to protect her, would believe that that arm she is then leaning on to support a heart loaded with love and joy, would, ere long, disgrace the manhood of its owner, and fell her to the ground? For our present peace, let us all thank God we cannot gaze into the mysterious regions of the future.
T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH
Short Essays
The future ain't what it used to be.
YOGI BERRA
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
Thank God we can't tell the future. We'd never get out of bed.
TRACY LETTS
August: Osage Country
There is no PAST anybody can get to, to alter things or even to know what those things were but there is definitely a future, we are already in it.
JOYCE CAROL OATES
Zombie
It is today that we must create the world of the future.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
Tomorrow Is Now
Coming events cast their shadows before.
JAMES JOYCE
Ulysses
Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia.... You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.
JOHN GREEN
Looking for Alaska
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 future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
It Seems to Me: Selected Letters of Eleanor Roosevelt
The future is not an inheritance, it is an opportunity and an obligation.
BILL CLINTON
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
Perhaps the safest prediction we can make about the future is that it will surprise us.
GEORGE LEONARD
The Silent Pulse
There is no justification for present existence other than its expansion into an indefinitely open future.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
The Second Sex
I go to scale the Future's possibilities! Farewell!
HENRIK IBSEN
Love's Comedy
The problem with the future is that it keeps turning into the present.
BILL WATTERSON
Calvin and Hobbes
Tomorrow will be a new day.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Don Quixote
The future will soon be a thing of the past.
GEORGE CARLIN
Napalm and Silly Putty
We are all engaged in looting the past. (Only the greatest geniuses manage to steal from the future.)
DONALD BARTHELME
"The Emerging Figure"