Quotes about the future

• “The future is already here—it is just unevenly distributed.” – William Gibson
• “When you come to a fork in the road, take it!” -Yoggi Berra
• “Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.” – John Lennon
• “Without expectations, there’s no future, only an endless present.” – François Jacob, Nobel prizewinner for medicine, noted in The Possible and the Actual that a sense of the future is one of the few properties that distinguish humans from animals.
• “What we call our future is the shadow that our past projects in front of us.” – Proust, A l’ombe des jeunes filles en fleurs, 1918.
• “It is proof of Trotsky’s farsightedness that none of his predictions has yet come true.” – A fan of Trotsky, communist leader, c.1930.
• “Any useful statement about the future should at first seem ridiculous.” – Jim Dator, futurist. (This useful statement is known as Dator’s Law.)
• “There are two kinds of forecasters: those who don’t know, and those who don’t know they don’t know.” – J K Galbraith, economist.
• “Everyone can see the future, but no one remembers the past.” – Alexander Sokulov’s film Russian Ark (2003).
• “Forecasting is not a respectable human activity and not worthwhile beyond the shortest of periods.” – Peter Drucker, Management.
• “As for the future, your task is not to foresee but to enable it.” – Max Jakobson, Finnish diplomat.
• “I did not say the future could be foretold but I said that its conditions could be foretold.” – H G Wells, science fiction writer
• “I have made good judgements in the past. I have made good judgements in the future.” – George W Bush, president.
  Predictions that went wrong:
• “The end of the world will surely come in eighteen hundred and eighty one.” – Mother Shipton, English prophet, c.1600.
• “One day there will be a telephone in every major city in the USA” – Alexander Graham Bell, c.1880.
• “I think there is a world market for as many as 5 computers.” – Thomas Watson, head of IBM,1943.
• “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” H.M. Warner, Warner Bros, 1927.

How about this one:
“If you don’t change direction you may end up where you are heading.” Lao Tzu, 6th Century BC.

Thanks Catherine – I like that!

I found these earlier:

‘It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.’ Anon

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.’ Dwight D. Eisenhower

‘He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.’ Francis Bacon

And there’s these:
‘After you’ve done a thing the same way for two years, look it over carefully. After five years, look at it with suspicion. And after ten years, throw it away and start all over.’ Alfred Edward Perlman, New York Times, 3 July 1958

‘For tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today’ African proverb
‘Change is inevitable. Change is constant’ Disraeli