quotations about the future
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
To ordain the future in advance in this way, man must first have learned to distinguish necessary events from chance ones, to think causally, to see and anticipate distant eventualities as if they belonged to the present, to decide with certainty what is the goal and what the means to it, and in general be able to calculate and compute.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Genealogy of Morals
My visions of the future are always pretty much standard issue. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer ... and there are flying cars.
JOSS WHEDON
foreword, Fray
The idea of the future, pregnant with an infinity of possibilities, is thus more fruitful than the future itself, and this is why we find more charm in hope than in possession, in dreams than in reality.
HENRI BERGSON
Time and Free Will
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
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
The future was always more important than the past.
PAUL PARK
A Princess of Roumania
Behind the curtain's mystic fold
The glowing future lies unrolled.
BRET HARTE
speech, Jan. 19, 1870
You glorify the past
When the future dries up.
U2
"God Part II"
Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
speech in the House of Commons, Jun. 18, 1940
I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.
GEORGE ELIOT
The Mill on the Floss
To know the future absolutely it to be trapped into that future absolutely. It collapses time. Present becomes future.
FRANK HERBERT
Children of Dune
You should never fast-forward into the future. Because every time you do, you rob yourself of the journey, the present moment, which, in the end, is all there really is.
ALYSON NOËL
Blue Moon
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
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
Our eyes are always blind when they view the future.
KELLY LINK
Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories
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
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
Total self-confidence is built through positive expectations. You can build positive expectations by knowing that you have the power within to overcome any obstacle that lies ahead. So many people have a magnetic attraction to the past. They save momentos, clippings, old letters, and trivia. There is nothing wrong with this, but if you want to succeed, your mind must focus on where you are going, not on where you have been. Instead of saving momentos, clippings, old letters, and trivia from the past, it would be more productive to make a scrapbook with pictures of where you want to go and what you want to be in the future.
ROBERT ANTHONY
The Ultimate Secrets of Total Self-Confidence
Change is the process by which the future invades our lives.
ALVIN TOFFLER
Future Shock