Future

We are indeed drifting into the arena of the unwell, making an enemy of our own future. ~~ Bruce Robinson

There's a moment coming. It's not here yet. It's still on the way. It's in the future. It hasn't arrived. Here it comes. Here it is… It's gone. ~~ George Carlin

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is. ~~ C. S. Lewis

The present is the necessary product of all the past, the necessary cause of all the future. ~~ Robert G. Ingersoll

In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. ~~ Andy Warhol

With a concession of responsibility … we have entrusted our lives and futures to professionals and experts who convince us that we have too little knowledge or wit to make any decisions of importance about the management of society. ~~ Dean Koontz [Fear Nothing]

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

If we do not learn from history, we shall be compelled to relive it. True. But if we do not change the future, we shall be compelled to endure it. And that could be worse. ~~ Alvin Toffler

We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future. ~~ Frederick Douglass

I try not to worry about the future … so I take each day just one anxiety attack at a time!! ~~ Ziggy [Tom Wilson]

Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past. ~~ George Orwell

The vast possibilities of our great future will become realities only if we make ourselves responsible for that future. ~~ Gifford Pinchot

You can never plan the future by the past. ~~ Edmund Burke

I am a scientist and therefore skeptical of the value of predictions about the future. What I can do is make a wish for the next millennium--a wish that the human race soon learns to live in harmony--in harmony with fellow humans, in harmony with the biological world and in harmony with the physical world. ~~ Dr. Michael Smith

It is the unique glory of the human species that its rejected do not fall by the wayside but become building stones of the new, and that those who cannot fit into the present should become the shapers of the future. ~~ Eric Hoffer

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past. ~~ Robertson Davies

Those who foresee the future and recognize it as tragic are often seized by a madness which forces them to commit the very acts which made it certain that what they dread shall happen. ~~ Dame Rebecca West

The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented. It was man's ability to invent which has made human society what it is. ~~ Dennis Gabor

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority. ~~ E.B. White

Enjoy present pleasures in such a way as not to injure future ones. ~~ Seneca

I actually embrace the idea of being happy now. I've had my share of pain, and I probably will in the future, too. But I've gotta say, it's sculpted me into the person I am now. ~~ Annie Lennox

The enemies of the future are always the very nicest people. ~~ Christopher Morley

We can no more afford to see ourselves as unavoidably victims of technological development than as happy beneficiaries of a future that has already been planned and exploited. Such an attitude does not lead to empowerment. ~~ Andrew Ross

What happens to the guy who smokes pot all the time? I don't know. But I do know something is being mortgaged; something is being drawn out of the future. ~~ Norman Mailer

Change is the process by which the future invades our lives. ~~ Alvin Toffler

I can feel guilty about the past, apprehensive about the future, but only in the present can I act. The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness. ~~ Abraham Maslow

My hope for the future is that mankind shall evolve to a higher spiritual plane whereby we can accept responsibility for our actions--release our need to dominate, control, and exploit one another--and learn to live in true harmony and peace… ~ Bob Kane

The earth we abuse and the living things we kill will, in the end, take their revenge; for in exploiting their presence we are diminishing our future. ~~ Marya Mannes [More in Anger]

I can face anything except the future and parts of the past and present. ~~ Ashleigh Brilliant

The only living life is in the past and future…the present is an interlude… strange interlude in which we call on past and future to bear witness we are living! ~~ Eugene O'Neill [Strange Interlude]

No way exists in the present to accurately determine the future effect of the least of our actions. ~~ Gerald Jampolsky

One should never place one's trust in the future. It doesn't deserve it. ~~ Andre Chamson

A nation is a body of people who have done great things together in the past and who hope to do great things together in the future. ~~ F. H. Underhill

The future is called "perhaps," which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the only important thing is not to allow that to scare you. ~~ Tennessee Williams

The best prophet of the future is the past. ~~ John Sherman

People move forward into the future out of the way they comprehend the past. When we don't understand something in our past, we are therefore crippled. ~~ Norman Mailer

Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it. ~~ Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld

As for future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague possibilities. ~~ Charles Darwin

The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be. ~~ Paul Valery

Traditionalists are pessimists about the future and optimists about the past. ~~ Lewis Mumford

Oh, if at every moment of our lives we could know the consequences of some of the utterings, thoughts and deeds that seem so trivial and unimportant at the time! And should we not conclude from such examples that there is no such thing in life as unimportant moments devoid of meaning for the future? ~~ Isabelle Eberhardt

What matters ultimately in the culture wars is what we do in our daily lives--not the big statements that we broadcast to the world at large, but the small messages we send through our families and our neighborhoods and our communities… The future will depend not so much on the movers and shakers in the centers of power, but on the hopes that we generate in our own communities, our schools, our churches, synagogues, and families. ~~ Michael Medved [The Devaluing of America]

The future belongs to those who fuse intelligence with faith, and who with courage and determination grope their way forward from chance to choice, from blind adaptation to creative evolution. ~~ Charles E. Merriam

If we tried

To sink the past beneath our feet, be sure

The future would not stand. ~~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Books, to the reading child, are so much more than books--they are dreams and knowledge, they are a future, and a past. ~~ Esther Meynell

Man… thinks of himself as a creator instead of a user, and this delusion is robbing him, not only of his natural heritage, but perhaps of the future. ~~ Helen Hoover

America would be a better place if leaders would do more long-term thinking. In Iroquois society, leaders are encouraged to remember seven generations in the past and consider seven generations in the future when making decisions that affect the people. ~~ Wilma Mankiller

Our duty is to preserve what the past has had to say for itself, and to say for ourselves what shall be true for the future. ~~ John Ruskin [Attributed, Unverified]

There are two things for which animals are to be envied: they know nothing of future evils, or of what people say about them. ~~ Voltaire

I have learned to live each day as it comes, and not to borrow trouble by dreading tomorrow. It is the dark menace of the future that makes cowards of us. ~~ Dorothy Dix

If humanity is to have a hopeful future, there is no escape from the preeminent involvement and responsibility of the single human soul, in all its loneliness and frailty. ~~ George F. Kennan

In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious. ~~ Blaise Pascal

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. ~~ Thomas Jefferson

Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future. ~~ Charles F. Kettering

The future is the past returning through another gate. ~~ Arnold H. Glasow

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. ~~ Patrick Henry

Inasmuch as the future is not predicted, but rather invented, I hope that the creativity of individuals for invention--scientific, artistic, industrial--will be nurtured by future societies worldwide. No one can predict the outcome of human intelligence properly applied. ~~ Dr. Arthur Kornberg

When you make a mistake, don't look back at it long. Take the reason of the thing into your mind, and then look forward. Mistakes are lessons of wisdom. The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power. ~~ Hugh White

We live in the present, we dream of the future, but we learn eternal truths from the past. ~~ Madame Chiang Kai-shek

The political leaders with whom we are familiar generally aspire to be superstars rather than heroes. The distinction is crucial. Superstars strive for approbation; heroes walk alone. Superstars crave consensus; heroes define themselves by the judgment of a future they see it as their task to bring about. Superstars seek success in a technique for eliciting support; heroes pursue success as the outgrowth of inner values. ~~ Henry Kissinger

The future has no lobby. ~~ Peter G. Peterson

To state the facts frankly is not to despair the future nor indict the past. The prudent heir takes careful inventory of his legacies and gives a faithful accounting to those whom he owes an obligation of trust. ~~ John F. Kennedy

I don't know what kind of future life I believe in, but I believe that all that we go through here must have some value. ~~ Eleanor Roosevelt

The mind must move. When there is nothing to go forward to, it explores the past. The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future. ~~ Jessamyn West

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. ~~ Eleanor Roosevelt

We cannot live in the past, nor can we re-create it. Yet as we unravel the past, the future also unfolds before us, as though they are mirrors without which neither can be seen or happen. ~~ Judy Grahn

I never think of the future. It comes soon enough. ~~ Albert Einstein

The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time. ~~ Abraham Lincoln

We must respect the past, and mistrust the present, if we wish to provide for the safety of the future. ~~ Joseph Joubert

Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes to society. ~~ Daniel Webster

We are living beyond our means. As a people we have developed a lifestyle that is draining the earth of its priceless and irreplaceable resources without regard for the future of our children and people all around the world. ~~ Margaret Mead

A fixed image of the future is in the worst sense ahistorical. ~~ Juliet Mitchell

Right action is freedom

From past and future also. ~~ T. S. Eliot

We can pay our debt to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves. ~~ John Buchan

There is… one difference between our ancestors and ourselves: they used to examine dreams in order to predict the future, while it is the past that intrigues us. ~~ Eli Wiesel

here are unsolicited purrs. A cat has to be in a very bad mood if a human cannot coax him to purr. There is little honor in this achievement, only the satisfaction that a minute or two is being soothed by such a pleasant sound. But the unsolicited purrs belong to quite another category. These are the jewels of the cat fraternity, distributed sparingly, like high honors in a kingdom. They are brought about by the great general contentment. No special incident induces them. No memory of past or prospect of future banquets. Just a whole series of happy thoughts suddenly combine together and whoever is near enough is lucky enough to hear the result. ~~ Derek Tangye

The present was an egg laid by the past that had the future inside its shell. ~~ Zora Neale Hurston

We are novices of a new life

Maybe we are living the last bad days

Maybe we shall live the first good days too

There is something bitter in this air

Between the past and the future

Between suffering and joy

Between anger and forgiveness. ~~ Cemal Sureya

Faced with the unknown future, the human mind seeks a refuge, and usually believes it has found it in what has already happened. ~~ Charles de Gaulle (see Said Who?)

If a man examine carefully his thoughts, he will be surprised to find how much he lives in the future. His well-being is always ahead. ~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

To each generation, that which preceded it must seem in some measure, according to its expectation of a hopeful futurity, the last age of innocence. ~~ Nathaniel Bigg

The grief of a child is always terrible. It is bottomless, without hope. A child has no past and no future. It just lives in the present moment--whole-heartedly. If the present moment spells disaster, the child suffers it with his whole heart, his whole soul, his whole strength, his whole little being. ~~ Maria von Trapp [Yesterday, Today, and Forever]

A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is, but often prompts us to rearrange the past. ~~ Eric Hoffer

Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present, which seldom happens to us. ~~ Jean de La Bruyere

Civilization requires slaves. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends. ~~ Oscar Wilde

Forgiveness is not a feeling but a promise or commitment to three things: 1) I will not use it against them in the future, 2) I will not talk to others about them, 3) I will not dwell on it myself. ~~ Jay E. Adams

People are afraid of the future, of the unknown. If a man faces up to it, and takes the dare of the future, he can have some control over his destiny. That's an exciting idea to me--better than waiting with everybody else to see what's going to happen. ~~ John Glenn

The only certain thing about the future is that it will surprise even those who have seen furthest into it. ~~ E. J. Hobsbawm

Life is not completed in a single life span; it cannot but pass on its impulses. If the chain of life is traced back into the past, one does not come to a beginning, and if one follows it into the future, one generation follows the next, and no end is ever found. ~~ Tsung Ping

Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future. ~~ Hannah Arendt

There's no future in spending our present worrying about our past. ~~ Ziggy [Tom Wilson]

Life is an irreversible process and for that reason its future can never be a repetition of the past. ~~ Walter Lippman

The future is like heaven--everyone exalts it but no one wants to go there now. ~~ James Baldwin

"History repeats itself" and "History never repeats itself" are about equally true…We never know enough about the infinitely complex circumstances of any past event to prophesy the future by analogy. ~~ G. M. Trevelyn

The future belongs to people who see possibilities before they become obvious. ~~ Ted Levitt

The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity… The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope. ~~ Samuel Johnson

Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations. ~~ George Bernard Shaw

The practical value of history is to throw the film of the past through the material projector of the present on to the screen of the future. ~~ B. H. Liddell Hart

The Yuppie idea of a future ain't my idea of a future. Your safe car, and home, and job, and all the time rushing between the three--let's make people feel they can grow up and have some education, some interest in life! That's what counts! ~~ Joe Strummer

Be careful that victories do not carry the seeds of future defeats. ~~ Ralph W. Sockman

Nothing we can do can change the past, but everything we do changes the future. ~~ Ashleigh Brilliant

The future is much like the present, only longer. ~~ Dan Quisenberry

Anger is not getting my way in the present. Fear is not getting my way in the future. Resentment is not getting my way in the past. ~~ Unattributed

To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top. ~~ Robert M. Pirsig

If you are truly serious about preparing your child for the future, don't teach him to subtract --teach him to deduct. ~~ Fran Lebowitz

To live in the past or in the future may be less satisfying than to live in the present, but it can never be as disillusioning. ~~ R. D. Laing [Self and Others]

Good government consists of knowing how much of the future to introduce into the present. ~~ Victor Hugo

Don't lay any certain plans for the future; it is like planting toads and expecting to raise toadstools. ~~ John Billings

In order to be utterly happy the only thing necessary is to refrain from comparing this moment with other moments in the past, which I often did not fully enjoy because I was comparing them with other moments of the future. ~~ Andre Gide

You don't just stumble into the future. You create your own future. ~~ Roger Smith

We are, perhaps uniquely among the earth's creatures, the worrying animal. We worry away our lives, fearing the future, discontent with the present, unable to take in the idea of dying, unable to sit still. ~~ Lewis Thomas [The Medusa and the Snail]

It is difficult to live in the present, ridiculous to live in the future, and impossible to live in the past. Nothing is as far away as one minute ago. ~~ Jim Bishop

A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past; he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future. ~~ H. G. Wells

You can't change the past, but you can ruin the present by worrying about the future. ~~ Peter's Almanac

I have seen the future--and it was being repaired. ~~ Mel Calman

A compassionate government keeps faith with the trust of the people and cherishes the future of their children. ~~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present and future. We make discoveries about ourselves. ~~ Gail Lumet Buckley

If we were logical, the future would be bleak, indeed. But we are more than logical. We are human beings, and we have faith, and we have hope, and we can work. ~~ Jacques Cousteau

The past is a ghost, the future a dream, and all we ever have is now. ~~ Bill Cosby

Cease to inquire what the future has in store. Take as a gift whatever the day brings forth. ~~ Horace

…our nature and purpose is … to love and to make love, to take joy from the beauty of the world, to live with an awareness that the future is not as real a place for any one of us as are the present and the past. ~~ Dean Koontz [Fear Nothing]

Our destiny rules over us, even when we are not yet aware of it; it is the future that makes laws for us today. ~~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges or scrub the floor. ~~ D. H. Lawrence

Depression is the inability to construct a future. ~~ Rollo May

There is no future for a people who deny their past. ~~ Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.

We often tend to be marching backward into the future. ~~ Paul Valery

We are in a period of transition. We are opening a new page of the history of mankind. Nobody can predict the future. However it may be hoped that the next millennium will see the emergence of a multipolar, multicultural world in which the men will have more opportunity to manifest their creativity. The past is full of violence. Our hope is in the future. Science and technology have to become instruments of cultural diffusion to make this hope a reality. ~~ Viscount Ilya Prigogine

The past is a kind of screen upon which we project our vision of the future; and it is indeed a moving picture, borrowing much of its form and color from our fears and aspirations. ~~ Carl L. Becker

In the future, I predict the word "minorities" will become obsolete. As today's world grows ever more fragmented, with so many races and religions, we will come to realize we're ALL part of some minority of one sort or another. For, if the human race is to survive and fulfill its destiny, we must finally accept the fact that diversity is part of humanity's heritage--and every so-called "minority" has its essential place in the Creator's master plan. ~~ Stan Lee

[On how Vietnam would be know to future generations:] The war the soldiers tried to stop. ~~ John F. Kerry [US Senator]