quotations about the future
Well the future for me is already a thing of the past.
BOB DYLAN
"Bye and Bye"
Nothing dates harder and faster and more strangely than the future.
NEIL GAIMAN
foreword, The Stars My Destination
Of the future, man knows least; yet, about this, he worries most.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.
GEORGE ELIOT
The Mill on the Floss
The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy.
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER
Letters and Papers from Prison
People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.
GEORGE ORWELL
Partisan Review, Winter 1945
When then things to come are said to be seen, it is not themselves which as yet are not (that is, which are to be), but their causes perchance or signs are seen, which already are.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
One might as well attempt to calculate mathematically the contingent forms of the tinkling bits of glass in a kaleidoscope as to look through the tube of the future and foretell its pattern.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
The story of the future is written in the past, and that which hath been is the same thing that shall be.
LORD ACTON
The History of Freedom in Christianity
The golden age is not in the past, but in the future; not in the origin of human experience, but in its consummate flower; not opening in Eden, but out from Gethsemane.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Tomorrow may never come to us. We do not live in tomorrow. We cannot find it in any of our title-deeds. The man who owns whole blocks of real estate, and great ships on the sea, does not own a single minute of tomorrow. Tomorrow! It is a mysterious possibility, not yet born. It lies under the seal of midnight--behind the veil of glittering constellations.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
The past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions.
ECKHART TOLLE
The Power of Now
You can't really predict the future. All you can do is invent it.
FREDERIK POHL
"Science Fiction's Hidden Hero"
Behind the curtain's mystic fold
The glowing future lies unrolled.
BRET HARTE
speech, Jan. 19, 1870
Our eyes are always blind when they view the future.
KELLY LINK
Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories
While we may open the books of the past, we may but grant flying glances of the future, through the mist that veils it.
ROBERT E. HOWARD
Kull: Exile of Atlantis
The future is like smoke from a burning forest, waiting for the wind of specific events and personal courage to blow the sparks and embers of reality this way or that.
DAN SIMMONS
The Rise of Endymion
Change is the process by which the future invades our lives.
ALVIN TOFFLER
Future Shock
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
Welcome to the future.... All our tragedies and triumphs, our lives and deaths, our shames and joys are just stuffing for your emptiness.
IAIN M. BANKS
Matter