quotations about the future
The past and future are veiled; but the past wears the widow's veil; the future, the virgin's.
JEAN PAUL
Treasury of Thought
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
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
Coming events cast their shadows before.
JAMES JOYCE
Ulysses
Learn to recognize the future the way a Steersman identifies guiding stars and corrects the course of his vessel. Learn from the past; never use it as an anchor.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
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 are all engaged in looting the past. (Only the greatest geniuses manage to steal from the future.)
DONALD BARTHELME
"The Emerging Figure"
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
Thank God we can't tell the future. We'd never get out of bed.
TRACY LETTS
August: Osage Country
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
The future ain't what it used to be.
YOGI BERRA
The future is not always a whole new ball game. There tends to be unfinished business. One trails all sorts of things around with one, things that simply won't be got rid of.
ANITA BROOKNER
Lewis Percy
Man is better without knowledge of things to come, for what is to be will be, and man can neither avert nor hasten. It is better to go in the dark when the road must pass a lion and there is no other road.
ROBERT E. HOWARD
Kull: Exile of Atlantis
You can't see the future, there's no such thing. It's all bets. You'll never get the same answer from two seers. But that doesn't mean either of them's wrong.
CHINA MIéVILLE
Kraken
What sense is there in continuing when one has seen the future?
ALAN LIGHTMAN
Einstein's Dreams
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"
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
We are always looking into the future, but we see only the past.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Airelles," The Writings of Madame Swetchine
He only is anxious about the future, to whom the present is unprofitable.
SENECA
Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales
Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and with a manly heart.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Hyperion