Future

The future is the period of time after the present, or the events that will occur in that time.

Sourced

  • 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.
  • People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it. Better yet, build it. Predicting the future is much too easy, anyway. You look at the people around you, the street you stand on, the visible air you breathe, and predict more of the same. To hell with more. I want better.
  • The future will soon be a thing of the past.
  • You can't fuck the future. The future fucks you! It catches up with you and it fucks you if you ain't planned for it!
    • Norman Wexler, through the main character Tony Manero in the motion picture Saturday Night Fever (1978)
  • The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
    • Winston Churchill, speech at Harvard University, September 6, 1943, in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations(1999), Knowles & Partington, p. 215.
  • I've seen the future, brother; it is murder.
  • Take hold of the future or the future will take hold of you -- be futurewise.
  • The only thing we know about the future is that it is going to be different.
    • Peter Drucker, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 1, Chapter 4.
  • The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented.
    • Dennis Gabor, Inventing the Future (1963)
    • Variants:
      • We cannot predict the future, but we can invent it.
      • The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
        • Alan Kay Alan Kay. Retrieved on 2008-02-18.; Stanford Engineering, Volume 1, Number 1, Autumn 1989, pg 1-6
    • Similar remarks are attributed to Peter Drucker
  • If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
  • The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed.
    • William Gibson, repeated ("As I've said many times...") in "The Science in Science Fiction", Talk of the Nation, NPR, 30 November 1999, (audio)
    • He is reported to have first said it in an interview on Fresh Air, NPR, 31 August 1993 (unverified).
  • Le futur n'est pas ce qui vient vers nous, mais ce vers quoi nous allons
    • The future is not what is coming at us, but what we are headed for.
    • Jean-Marie Guyau (Le Genèse de l'idée du temps), translation by Astragale
  • Look not mournfully into the Past; it comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present; it is thine.
    Go forth to meet the shadowy Future without fear and with a manly heart.
  • We have no right to assume that any physical laws exist, or if they have existed up until now, that they will continue to exist in a similar manner in the future.
    • Max Planck, The Universe in the Light of Modern Physics (1931).
  • The future will be better tomorrow
  • The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
    • Eleanor Roosevelt, as quoted in Leonard C. Schlup and Donald W. Whisenhunt, It Seems to Me: Selected Letters of Eleanor Roosevelt (2001), p. 2.
  • If you can look into the seeds of time,
    And say which grain will grow and which will not;
    Speak then to me.
  • To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
  • You have to face the future when the truth comes out.
    • Scrubs, My Musical
  • ...stop haunting your past and try to drop in on the future.
  • The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine.
    • Nikola Tesla, quoted by Dragislav L. Petković , "A Visit to Nikola Tesla", Politika (April 1927); as cited by Margaret Cheney, Robert Uth, and Jim Glenn, Tesla, Master of Lightning (1999), p. 73.
  • Man remains in the end what he started as in the beginning: a biosystem with a limited capacity for change. When this capacity is overwhelmed, the consequence is future shock.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 304-06.
  • That what will come, and must come, shall come well.
  • Making all futures fruits of all the pasts.
  • Some day Love shall claim his own
    Some day Right ascend his throne,
    Some day hidden Truth be known;
    Some day—some sweet day.
    • Lewis J. Bates, Some Sweet Day.
  • The year goes wrong, and tares grow strong,
    Hope starves without a crumb;
    But God's time is our harvest time,
    And that is sure to come.
    • Lewis J. Bates, Our Better Day.
  • Dear Land to which Desire forever flees;
    Time doth no present to our grasp allow,
    Say in the fixed Eternal shall we seize
    At last the fleeting Now?
  • You can never plan the future by the past.
    • Edmund Burke, letter to a Member of the National Assembly, Volume IV, p. 55.
  • With mortal crisis doth portend,
    My days to appropinque an end.
  • 'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,
    And coming events cast their shadows before.
  • Certis rebus certa signa præcurrunt.
    • Certain signs precede certain events.
    • Cicero, De Divinatione, I. 52.
  • * * * So often do the spirits
    Of great events stride on before the events,
    And in to-day already walks to-morrow.
  • There shall be no more snow
    No weary noontide heat,
    So we lift our trusting eyes
    From the hills our Fathers trod:
    To the quiet of the skies:
    To the Sabbath of our God.
  • Quid sit futurum cras, fuge quærere: et

Quem Fors dierum cunque dabit, lucro
Appone.

    • Cease to inquire what the future has in store, and to take as a gift whatever the day brings forth.
    • Horace, Carmina, I. 9. 13.
  • Prudens futuri temporis exitum
    Caliginosa nocte premit deus.
    • A wise God shrouds the future in obscure darkness.
    • Horace, Carmina, III. 29. 29.
  • You'll see that, since our fate is ruled by chance,
    Each man, unknowing, great,
    Should frame life so that at some future hour
    Fact and his dreamings meet.
  • With whom there is no place of toil, no burning heat, no piercing cold, nor any briars there … this place we call the Bosom of Abraham.
    • Josephus, Discourse to the Greeks concerning Hades. Homer, Odyssey, VI. 42.
  • When Earth's last picture is painted, and the tubes are twisted and dried,
    When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died,
    We shall rest, and faith, we shall need it—lie down for an æon or two,
    Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall set us to work anew.
  • Le présent est gros de l'avenir.
    • The present is big with the future.
    • Leibnitz.
  • There's a good time coming, boys;
    A good time coming:
    We may not live to see the day,
    But earth shall glisten in the ray
    Of the good time coming.
    Cannon-balls may aid the truth,
    But thought's a weapon stronger;
    We'll win our battle by its aid,
    Wait a little longer.
  • The future is a world limited by ourselves; in it we discover only what concerns us and, sometimes, by chance, what interests those whom we love the most.
  • Take therefore no thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
    • Matthew, VI. 34.
  • There was the Door to which I found no key;
    There was the Veil through which I might not see.
  • Venator sequitur fugientia; capta relinquit;
    Semper et inventis ulteriora petit.
    • The hunter follows things which flee from him; he leaves them when they are taken; and ever seeks for that which is beyond what he has found.
    • Ovid, Amorum (16 BC), Book II. 9. 9.
  • Ludit in humanis divina potentia rebus,
    Et certam præsens vix habet hora fidem.
    • Heaven makes sport of human affairs, and the present hour gives no sure promise of the next.
    • Ovid, Epistolæ Ex Ponto, IV. 3. 49.
  • Nos duo turba sumus.
    • We two [Deucalion and Pyrrha, after the deluge] form a multitude.
    • Ovid, Metamorphoses, I. 355.
  • Après nous le déluge.
    • After us the deluge.
    • Mme. Pompadour. After the battle of Rossbach. See Larousse, Fleurs Historiques. Madame de Hausset, Memoirs. (Ed. 1824), p. 19. Also attributed to Louis XV by the French. Compare Cicero, De Finibus, XI. 16.
  • Oh, blindness to the future! kindly giv'n,
    That each may fill the circle mark'd by heaven.
  • In adamantine chains shall Death be bound,
    And Hell's grim tyrant feel th' eternal wound.
  • And better skilled in dark events to come.
  • Etwas fürchten und hoffen und sorgen,
    Muss der Mensch für den kommenden Morgen.
    • Man must have some fears, hopes, and cares, for the coming morrow.
    • Friedrich Schiller, Die Braut von Messina.
  • But there's a gude time coming.
  • Calamitosus est animus futuri anxius.
    • The mind that is anxious about the future is miserable.
    • Seneca, Epistolæ Ad Lucilium, XCVIII.
  • How many ages hence
    Shall this our lofty scene be acted over
    In states unborn and accents yet unknown.
  • God, if Thy will be so,
    Enrich the time to come with smooth-faced peace,
    With smiling plenty and fair prosperous days!
  • Quid crastina volveret ætas,
    Scire nefas homini.
    • Man is not allowed to know what will happen to-morrow.
    • Statius, Thebais, III. 562.
  • When the Rudyards cease from Kipling
    And the Haggards ride no more.
    • J. K. Stephen, Lapsus Calami.
  • When I am dead let the earth be dissolved in fire.
    • Suetonius. Quoting Nero. Nero. 38. Quoted by Milton from Tiberius in his Church Government, Book I, Chapter V. Tiberius, quoting an unknown Greek poet. See note of Leutsch, Appendix II. 56, to Proverbs LVIII. 23. Euripides, Fragment Inc. B, XXVII.
  • Till the sun grows cold,
    And the stars are old,
    And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold.
  • Istuc est sapere, non quod ante pedes modo est
    Videre, sed etiam illa, quæ futura sunt
    Prospicere.
    • That is to be wise to see not merely that which lies before your feet, but to foresee even those things which are in the womb of futurity.
    • Terence, Adelphi, III. 3. 32.
  • I hear a voice you cannot hear,
    Which says, I must not stay;
    I see a hand you cannot see,
    Which beckons me away.
  • Dabit deus his quoque finem.
    • God will put an end to these also.
    • Virgil, Æneid (29-19 BC), I. 199.
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Last modified on 1 May 2013, at 10:47