Selected future quotes

1. Well, right now it seems that things are going very badly for me, have been doing so for some considerable time, and may continue to do so well into the future. But it is possible that everything will get better after it has all seemed to go wrong. I am not counting on it, it may never happen, but if there should be a change for the better I should regard that as a gain, I should rejoice, I should say, at last! So there was something after all!

2. We live in the midst of alarms; anxiety beclouds the future; we expect some new disaster with each newspaper we read.

3. May our children and our children's children to a thousand generations, continue to enjoy the benefits conferred upon us by a united country, and have cause yet to rejoice under those glorious institutions bequeathed us by Washington and his compeers.

4. I begin with the young. We older ones are used up but my magnificent youngsters! Are there finer ones anywhere in the world? Look at all these men and boys! What material! With you and I, we can make a new world.

5. In this world him who does not abandon himself the Almighty will not desert. Him who helps himself will the Almighty always also help; He will show him the way by which he can gain his rights, his freedom, and therefore his future.

6. With the defeat of the Reich and pending the emergence of the Asiatic, the African and, perhaps, the South American nationalisms, there will remain in the world only two Great Powers capable of confronting each other-the United States and Soviet Russia. The laws of both history and geography will compel these two Powers to a trial of strength, either military or in the fields of economics and ideology. (2nd April 1945)

7. How does it secure the blessings of liberty to our posterity, to those generations yet unborn, to kill them, aborting them in the womb?

8. Ideas, unlike solid structures, do not perish. They remain immortal, immaterial and everywhere, like all Divine things. Ideas are a golden, savage landscape that we wander unaware, without a map. Be careful: in the last analysis, reality may be exactly what we think it is.

9. Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.

10. I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.

11. We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.

12. Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.

13. May the conscience and the common sense of the peoples be awakened, so that we may reach a new stage in the life of nations, where people will look back on war as an incomprehensible aberration of their forefathers!

14. I have the feeling that this Moscow Pact will at some time or other exact vengeance upon National Socialism.

15. I hope that seeing the excitement of solving this problem will make young mathematicians realize that there are lots and lots of other problems in mathematics which are going to be just as challenging in the future.

16. Education is the best provision for old age.

17. Hold on to me: Someday I may be quite valuable.

18. It's hard to face tomorrow, but it's easier than facing no tomorrow.

19. Strangely enough, this is the past that somebody in the future is longing to go back to.

20. The entire universe will eventually disintegrate but by then I hope to be in a safer place.

21. Watch out! It's quite possible that some of my best mistakes haven't yet been made.

22. My main object in life is to see what will happen next.

23. The reports on human progress are beginning to come in, and some are a little discouraging.

24. It's hard letting go of the past, when there are no firm handholds in the future.

25. My biggest error? Something that is to happen yet.

26. Only by not forgetting the past can we be the master of the future.

27. I believe in the future a new Dante will write a new Divine Comedy.

28. Art and science coincide insofar as both aim to improve the lives of men and women. The latter normally concerns itself with profit, the former with pleasure. In the coming age, art will fashion our entertainment out of new means of productivity in ways that will simultaneously enhance our profit and maximize our pleasure.

29. Can a society in which thought and technique are scientific persist for a long period, as, for example, ancient Egypt persisted, or does it necessarily contain within itself forces which must bring either decay or explosion?

30. After ages during which the earth produced harmless trilobites and butterflies, evolution progressed to the point at which it generated Neros, Genghis Khans, and Hitlers. This, however, is a passing nightmare; in time the earth will become again incapable of supporting life, and peace will return.

31. The day of the android has dawned.

32. David Brin is a technological determinist. He thinks that we understand the trend and we need to hop on it. I don't have any such illusions.

33. I used to think that cyberspace was fifty years away. What I thought was fifty years away, was only ten years away. And what I thought was ten years away... it was already here. I just wasn't aware of it yet.

34. All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.

35. So for you people who are filled with fear that I might someday be released: breathe easy, I don't see it happening.

36. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education.

37. You can never plan the future by the past.

38. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

39. Some day I'm going to climb Everest.

40. Looking Backward was written in the belief that the Golden Age lies before us and not behind us.

41. 'I would like to make the point that we cannot undo the past but we can learn from it, and we cannot predict the future but we can shape and build it.'

42. 'We need to marshal and direct our energy toward building this nation into a peaceful, prosperous and proud bequest to our children.'

43. 'As a people, we have not been able to chart a clear map toward a common destiny. We will not be able to do this if our leaders continue to promote sectional and separate development.'

44. 'We cannot afford to ignore HIV/AIDS. We can only ignore this battle at the cost of being regarded by future generations of Pacific Islanders as lacking the will, the foresight, the understanding to tackle this issue, which threatens our very future.'

45. 'A great and noble man ... whose foresight and vision still impacts on our future.' (Ratu Josefa Iloilo, President of Fiji; 2003)

46. The likelihood is that, in 100,000 years time, we shall either have reverted to wild barbarism, or else civilisation will have advanced beyond all recognition - into colonies in outer space, for instance. In either case, evolutionary extrapolations from present conditions are likely to be highly misleading.

47. We humans are an extremely important manifestation of the replication bomb, because it is through us - through our brains, our symbolic culture and our technology - that the explosion may proceed to the next stage and reverberate through deep space.

48. A generation which ignores history has no past - and no future.

49. The second best thing about space travel is that the distances involved make war very difficult, usually impractical, and almost always unnecessary. This is probably a loss for most people, since war is our race's most popular diversion, one which gives purpose and color to dull and stupid lives. But it is a great boon to the intelligent man who fights only when he must - never for sport.

50. What are the facts? Again and again and again - what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what 'the stars foretell,' avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable 'verdict of history' - what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!

51. To-morrow it seem Like the empty words of a dream Remembered on waking.

52. Progress, man's distinctive mark alone, Not God's, and not the beasts': God is, they are, Man partly is and wholly hopes to be.

53. Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made: Our times are in his hand Who saith, 'A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!'

54. And nothing to look backward to with pride, And nothing to look forward to with hope.

55. You could not tell, and yet it looked as if The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff, The cliff in being backed by continent; It looked as if a night of dark intent Was coming, and not only a night, an age. Someone had better be prepared for rage. There would be more than ocean-water broken Before God's last Put out the Light was spoken.

56. I am assured at any rate Man's practically inexterminate. Someday I must go into that. There's always been an Ararat Where someone someone else begat To start the world all over at.

57. It is the future that creates his present. All is an interminable chain of longing.

58. The present is the necessary product of all the past, the necessary cause of all the future.

59. I know not what discoveries, what inventions, what thoughts may leap from the brain of the world. I know not what garments of glory may be woven by the years to come. I cannot dream of the victories to be won upon the fields of thought; but I do know, that coming from the infinite sea of the future, there will never touch this 'bank and shoal of time' a richer gift, a rarer blessing than liberty for man, for woman, and for child.

60. You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something.

61. Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best 20-20 hindsight. It's good for seeing where you've been. It's good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can't tell you where you ought to go.

62. I, too, shall wake again.

63. 'Tain't worthwhile to wear a day all out before it comes.

64. I consider Paine our greatest political thinker. As we have not advanced, and perhaps never shall advance, beyond the Declaration and Constitution, so Paine has had no successors who extended his principles. Although the present generation knows little of Paine's writings,and although he has almost no influence upon contemporary thought, Americans of the future will justly appraise his work. I am certain of it. Truth is governed by natural laws and cannot be denied. Paine spoke truth with a peculiarly clear and forceful ring. Therefore time must balance the scales.

65. I was born in 1953, a child of the Cold War era, raised amid the constant fear of a conflict with the potential to destroy humanity. Whatever other dangers may exist, no such fear exists today. Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war or sending our children to war. That is a prize beyond value.

66. I know we have still done very little, and that the main tasks still lie ahead of us. I would say that we have just completed a year of preparation in which the conditions for a new environment have been created.

67. I appeal to all pupils, students and young people, asking you to focus on the horizons that are opening up for you, and which you could only dream of a year ago. Our future will depend on your desire for education and moral values as well as on your entrepreneurial spirit.

68. Je represente un parti qui n'existe pas encore, le parti Revolution-Civilisation. Ce parti fera le vingtieme siecle. Il en sortira d'abord les Etats-Unis d'Europe, puis les Etats-Unis du Monde.

69. Du fond de l'ombre ou nous sommes et ou vous etes, vous ne voyez pas beaucoup plus distinctement que nous les radieuses et lointaines portes de l'eden. Seulement les pretres se trompent. Ces portes saintes ne sont pas derriere nous, mais devant nous.

70. Italiens ou francais, la misere nous regarde tous. Depuis que l'histoire ecrit et que la philosophie medite, la misere est le vetement du genre humain; le moment serait enfin venu d'arracher cette guenille, et de remplacer, sur les membres nus de l'Homme-Peuple, la loque sinistre du passe par la grande robe pourpre de l'aurore.

71. Que l'avenir soit un orient au lieu d'etre un couchant, c'est la consolation de l'homme.

72. The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today's work superbly well.

73. Upon its preservation must depend our own happiness and that of countless generations to come. Whatever dangers may threaten it, I shall stand by it and maintain it in its integrity to the full extent of the obligations imposed and the power conferred upon me by the Constitution.

74. We believe that peace is not just signed papers, but rather a contract between generations for the building of a more promising and less threatening future

75. I do not believe it is man's destiny to compress this once boundless earth into a small neighborhood, the better to destroy it. Nor do I believe it is in the nature of man to strike eternally at the image of himself, and therefore of God. I profoundly believe that there is on this horizon, as yet only dimly perceived, a new dawn of conscience. In that purer light, people will come to see themselves in each other, which is to say they will make themselves known to one another by their similarities rather than by their differences. Man's knowledge of things will begin to be matched by man's knowledge of self. The significance of a smaller world will be measured not in terms of military advantage, but in terms of advantage for the human community. It will be the triumph of the heartbeat over the drumbeat. These are my beliefs and I hold them deeply, but they would be without any inner meaning for me unless I felt that they were also the deep beliefs of human beings everywhere. And the proof of this, to my mind, is the very existence of the United Nations.

76. Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment. . . . Humanity is in 'final exam' as to whether or not it qualifies for continuance in Universe

77. The possibility has been established for the production of...a Master Race, the future 'masters of the earth'...made to endure for millennia - a higher kind of men who...employ democratic Europe as their most pliant and supple instrument for getting hold of the destinies of the earth.

78. When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money-motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession - as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life - will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease ... But beware! The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight.

79. The new understanding of the universe has come about through the new knowledge amassed in the last hundred years - by psychologists, biologists, and other scientists, by archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians. It has defined man's responsibility and destiny - to be an agent for the rest of the world in the job of realizing its inherent potentialities as fully as possible. It is as if man had been suddenly appointed managing director of the biggest business of all, the business of evolution - appointed without being asked if he wanted it, and without proper warning and preparation. What is more, he can't refuse the job. Whether he wants to or not, whether he is conscious of what he is doing or not, he is in point of fact determining the future direction of evolution on this earth. That is his inescapable destiny, and the sooner he realizes it and starts believing in it, the better for all concerned.

80. Buddha declared before his death that he would be coming again after twenty-five centuries, and that his name would be Maitreya. Maitreya means the friend. Buddhas don't come back; no enlightened person ever comes back, so it is just a way of saying... What he was saying is of tremendous importance. It has nothing to do with his coming back; he cannot come back. What he meant was that the ancient relationship between the Master and the disciple would become irrelevant in twenty-five centuries. It was his clarity of perception - he was not predicting anything - just his clarity to see that as things are changing, as they have changed in the past and as they go on changing, it would take at least twenty-five centuries for the Master and disciple relationship to become out of date. Then the enlightened Master will be only the friend. I had always wanted not to be a Master to anybody. But people want a Master, they want to be disciples; hence, I played the role. It is time that I should say to you that now many of you are ready to accept me as the friend. Those who are in tune with me continuously, without any break, are the only real friends...

81. I do not ordinarily make prophecies, but about this I am absolutely prophetic: the coming hundred years are going to be more and more irrational, and more and more mystical. The second thing: After a hundred years people will be perfectly able to understand why I was misunderstood - because I am the beginning of the mystical, the irrational. I am a discontinuity with the past. The past cannot understand me; only the future will understand. The past can only condemn me. It cannot understand me, it cannot answer me, it cannot argue with me; it can only condemn me. Only the future : as man becomes more and more available to the mysterious, to the meaningless yet significant : After a hundred years they will understand. Because the more man becomes aware of the mysterious side of life, the less he is political; the less he is a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian; the less is the possibility for his being a fanatic. A man in tune with the mysterious is humble, loving, caring, accepting the uniqueness of everybody. He is rejoicing in the freedom of each individual, because only with freedom can this garden of humanity be a rich place.

82. Un jour viendra ou il n'y aura plus d'autres champs de bataille que les marches s'ouvrant au commerce et les esprits s'ouvrant aux idees. Un jour viendra ou les boulets et les bombes seront remplaces par les votes, par le suffrage universel des peuples, par le venerable arbitrage d'un grand senat souverain qui sera a l'Europe ce que le parlement est a l'Angleterre, ce que la diete est a l'Allemagne, ce que l'assemblee legislative est a la France! Un jour viendra ou l'on montrera un canon dans les musees comme on y montre aujourd'hui un instrument de torture, en s'etonnant que cela ait pu etre! Un jour viendra ou l'on verra ces deux groupes immenses, les Etats-Unis d'Amerique, les Etats-Unis d'Europe, places en face l'un de l'autre, se tendant la main par-dessus les mers, echangeant leurs produits, leur commerce, leur industrie, leurs arts, leurs genies, defrichant le globe, colonisant les deserts, ameliorant la creation sous le regard du createur, et combinant ensemble, pour en tirer le bien-etre de tous, ces deux forces infinies, la fraternite des hommes et la puissance de Dieu!