quotations about the future
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
Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and with a manly heart.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Hyperion
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 remains uncertain and so it should, for it is the canvas upon which we paint our desires. Thus always the human condition faces a beautifully empty canvas.
FRANK HERBERT
Children of Dune
We have annexed the future into the present, as merely one of those manifold alternatives open to us. Options multiply around us, and we live in an almost infantile world where any demand, any possibility, whether for life-styles, travel, sexual roles and identities, can be satisfied instantly.
J. G. BALLARD
Crash
There is no present or future, only the past, happening over and over again, now.
EUGENE O'NEILL
A Moon for the Misbegotten
You can never plan the future by the past.
EDMUND BURKE
letter to a Member of the National Assembly
Tomorrow will be a new day.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Don Quixote
The wiser a man is, it seems to me, the more vividly he can see the future as part of the evolving present. He doesn't break the flow of life, he directs it, hastens it, but preserves its continuity.
WALTER LIPPMANN
Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest
Rational behavior ... depends upon a ceaseless flow of data from the environment. It depends upon the power of the individual to predict, with at least a fair success, the outcome of his own actions. To do this, he must be able to predict how the environment will respond to his acts. Sanity, itself, thus hinges on man's ability to predict his immediate, personal future on the basis of information fed him by the environment.
ALVIN TOFFLER
Future Shock
I go to scale the Future's possibilities! Farewell!
HENRIK IBSEN
Love's Comedy
Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today.
AYN RAND
The Romantic Manifesto
Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
It is impossible for you to take power over the future because it isn't even real.
WM. PAUL YOUNG
The Shack
There is no justification for present existence other than its expansion into an indefinitely open future.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
The Second Sex
We are the first men of a Future that has not materialized. We belong to a "great age" that has not "come off". We moved too quickly for the world. We set too sharp a pace.
WYNDHAM LEWIS
Blasting and Bombardiering
The future is an infinite succession of presents.
HOWARD ZINN
You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train
There is no future until we settle our past.
ALEXA DAVALOS
The Chronicles of Riddick
The future is inevitable and precise, but it may not occur. God lurks in the gaps.
JORGE LUIS BORGES
"Creation and P. H. Gosse," Other Inquisitions