Future Is Not Certain Quotes & Sayings

The world is changing, but I am not changing with it. There is no e-reader or Kindle in my future. My philosophy is simple: Certain things are perfect the way they are. The sky, the Pacific Ocean, procreation and the Goldberg Variations all fit this bill, and so do books. Books are sublimely visceral, emotionally evocative objects that constitute a perfect delivery systemBooks that we can touch; books that we can smell; books that we can depend on. Books that make us believe, for however short a time, that we shall all live happily ever after. — Joe Queenan

We can learn from history how past generations thought and acted, how they responded to the demands of their time and how they solved their problems. We can learn by analogy, not by example, for our circumstances will always be different than theirs were. The main thing history can teach us is that human actions have consequences and that certain choices, once made, cannot be undone. They foreclose the possibility of making other choices and thus they determine future events. — Gerda Lerner

THE subject of this Essay is not the so-called Liberty of the Will, so unfortunately opposed to the misnamed doctrine of Philosophical Necessity; but Civil, or Social Liberty: the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual. A question seldom stated, and hardly ever discussed, in general terms, but which profoundly influences the practical controversies of the age by its latent presence, and is likely soon to make itself recognized as the vital question of the future. It is so far from being new, that, in a certain sense, it has divided mankind, almost from the remotest ages, but in the stage of progress into which the more civilized portions of the species have now entered, it presents itself under new conditions, and requires a different and more fundamental treatment. — John Stuart Mill

There is little faith involved in setting out on a journey where the destination is certain and every step in between has been mapped in detail. Bravery, trust, is about leaving camp in the dark, when we do not know the route ahead and cannot be certain we will ever return. — Bear Grylls

5. Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption, I vow to cultivate good health, both physical and mental, for myself, my family, and my society by practicing mindful eating, drinking, and consuming. I vow to ingest only items that preserve peace, well-being, and joy in my body, in my consciousness, and in the collective body and consciousness of my family and society. I am determined not to use alcohol or any other intoxicant or to ingest foods or other items that contain toxins, such as certain TV programs, magazines, books, films, and conversations. I am aware that to damage my body or my consciousness with these poisons is to betray my ancestors, my parents, my society, and future generations. I will work to transform violence, fear, anger, and confusion in myself and in society by practicing a diet for myself and for society. I understand that a proper diet is crucial for self-transformation and for the transformation of society. — Thich Nhat Hanh

9. How can we tell if a politician is telling the truth? Is there a way to know for sure? You may remember the old joke: "How do you know if a politician is lying? If he's moving his lips." It's not that funny anymore, is it? Obviously, there is no certain way to know at the moment something is said. But remember this: past performance serves to reveal future behavior. A person who has exhibited a pattern of lying is a liar. — Andy Andrews

Man can only be certain about the present moment. But is that quite true either? Can he really know the present? Is he in a position to make any judgment about it? Certainly not. For how can a person with no knowledge of the future understand the meaning of the present? If we do not know what future the present is leading us toward, how can we say whether this present is good or bad, whether it deserves our concurrence, or our suspicion, or our hatred? — Milan Kundera

It is almost certain that we will fail. But how will future history judge the German people, if not even a handful of men had the courage to put an end to that criminal? — Henning Von Tresckow

The most futile thing a man can do is to ponder the alternatives, to stew and fret over the life that might have been lived if circumstances had not pointed his future in a certain direction. — William Styron

When we are wounded it's as if something is stolen from us. We adapt and accept a particular truth that sets us up to behave a certain way in the future when we are faced with a situation that reminds us of the past. What we know about ourselves becomes influenced by our perception of these events. We associate and project the qualities of those who hurt us onto others unfairly. Every situation may appear similar, but people are not. Look at the people that love you and not the reminder of ghosts. — Shannon L. Alder

I came to Him because I did not know which way to turn. I remained with Him because there is no other way I wish to turn. I came to Him longing for something I did not have. I remain with Him because I have something I will not trade. I came to Him as a stranger. I remain with Him in the most intimate of friendships. I came to Him unsure about the future. I remain with Him certain about my destiny. I came amid the thunderous cries of a culture that has 330 million deities. I remain with Him knowing that truth cannot be all-inclusive. — Ravi Zacharias

To answer your question as honestly as I can, I've wanted since I was very little to not have to worry about money. I've never been poverty-level poor (I mean, there's been years where I've been officially beneath the poverty line, but that wasn't poverty: that was being a student and living the Student Lifestyle), but I've been in a place where you know you can't afford a better-quality food, where you can't do certain things because of money, and I'd prefer not to have those problems if I can. I sort of have troubles with money in general, with how it determines so much of our lives but with how we all try to ignore it, but I would like to be (and stay) in a place where I can pick up some new comics and games and not worry about how much they cost.
This is terrible; you're asking me where I want to be in the future, what I want my life to be like, and the only thing I can tell you is Man, all I know is I don't want to be POOR. — Ryan North

Latin Americans hold on tight even to pain and suffering, preferring a certain present to an uncertain future. Some of this is only natural, entirely human. But for us, the fear is paralyzing; it generates not only anxiety but also paralysis. — Oscar Arias

Do you know what time is? Not by a watch, not chronological time, buy psychological time? It is the interval between idea and action. An idea is for self protection obviously; it is the idea of being secure. Action is always immediate; it is not of the past or future; to act must always be in the present, but action is so dangerous, so uncertain, that we conform to and idea which we hope will give us certain safety. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

There is, I know not how, a certain presage, as it were, of a future existence; and this takes the deepest root, and is most discoverable, in the greatest geniuses and most exalted souls. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

An America that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but the sins of the present and the certain sins of the future. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

The result of my journey was to bring a certain mental peace. Where there had been chaos there was now order. My mind was at rest. I had a philosophy at last. The words of Christ "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you," had a new meaning for me. Not in the past or in the future, but now and here is Heaven within us. All our duties lie in this world and in the present, and trying impatiently to peer into that which lies beyond is as vain as fruitless. — Andrew Carnegie

What is it, really, that we could lose if we handed ourselves over to the discernment of faith? Would we really lose anything except the illusion of control? This question suggests that there may be an idolatrous project underlying resistance to spiritual discernment: the desire for a decision-making process that we can predict and control.
But the obedience of faith offers no certainties, not even that of being certain of our our fidelity. We cannot know if the decision we make here and now are correct. We only know that they are the best we are able to make, and that in the future we might both regret them and need to change them. The reason has nothing to do with our sinfulness and everything to do with the fact that faith has to do with the Living God, who always moves ahead of us in surprising and sometimes shocking ways. "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Heb. 10:31). — Luke Timothy Johnson

The artist of the future will live the ordinary life of a human being, earning his living by some kind of labour. He will strive to give the fruit of that supreme spiritual force which passes through him to the greatest number of people, because this conveying of the feelings that have been born in him to the greatest number of people is his joy and his reward. The artist of the future will not even understand how it is possible for an artist, whose joy consists in the widest dissemination of his works, to give these works only in exchange for a certain payment. — Leo Tolstoy

I am not comfortable kissing or exposing, and I believe in laying open my cards well in advance so that no one is inconvenienced. Till date, I have been very specific about certain things, and my directors have always understood my concerns and played along. I don't think this should pose a problem in the future as well. — Sonakshi Sinha

There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to the public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute not common law. Neither individuals not corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back. — Robert A. Heinlein

Nothing is certain," he murmured. "The future is constantly changing, and no one can predict what happens next. We have the power to change our destiny, because fate is not set in stone, and we are always free to make a choice. — Julie Kagawa

To write for posterity* is not to worry whether they will read us tomorrow.
It is to aspire to a certain quality of writing.
Even when no one reads us.

*Posterity is not the whole of future generations. It is a small group of men with taste, a proper upbringing, and erudition, in each generation. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

I think the misconceptions, there are certain people that are fixed in those with those beliefs, and been in those for twenty-five years, you're not going to change them ... What you've got to do is basically talk to the future about what you want to with the country. — William M. Daley

The domestication (the culture) of man does not go deep
where it does go deep it at once becomes degeneration (type: the Christian). The 'savage' (or, in moral terms, the evil man) is a return to nature
and in a certain sense his recovery, his cure from 'culture'. — Friedrich Nietzsche

That's it!" "Anton," her mother gasped. "You startled me." "Sorry, my love." Papa patted her hand as she returned to sit beside him on the edge of the bed. "But I've just had the most astounding idea." "What is it?" The question rang simultaneously from both Nicole and her mother. Her papa smiled. A scheming, devilish, piratical smile that one would expect to see right before a blade ran him through. Nicole flopped onto the divan. "Nicki's going to take a little trip to New Orleans." "But why?" Maman asked. "She just got home." Papa rubbed his palms against his thighs in anticipation. "Don't you see? It will solve everything. It will keep Nicki away from Jenkins and secure the future of Renard Shipping at the same time." "How?" Nicole ventured, somehow certain she'd not like the answer. Her papa's grin confirmed it. "By giving me the next best thing to a son." "And that is . . . ?" her mother prompted. "A son-in-law. — Karen Witemeyer

But it is not really necessary to look too far into the future; we see enough already to be certain that it will be magnificent. Only let us hurry and open the roads. — David McCullough

What is the meaning of life? What is our purpose on earth? These are some of the great, false questions of religion. We need not answer them, for they are badly posed, but we can live our answers all the same. At a minimum, we can create the conditions for human flourishing in this life - the only life of which any of us can be certain. That means we should not terrify our children with thoughts of hell or poison them with hatred for infidels. We should not teach our sons to consider women their future property or convince our daughters that they are property even now. And we must decline to tell our children that human history began with bloody magic and will end with bloody magic in a glorious war between the righteous and the rest. — Sam Harris

Page 99: ... unless something changes, the future that you can expect is more of the past. Sorry or becoming committed does not make Jim Carrey a great golfer, or made Jack nicklaus funny. Recommitment does not make a person who is unsuited for a particular position suited for it all of a sudden. Promises by someone who has a history of letting you down in a relationship mean nothing certain in terms of the future. — Henry Cloud

Ash pulled me closer, his eyes gentle as they gazed into mine. "Meghan, I'm going to tell you something someone once told me, when I was afraid of what was to come." He lowered his head, soft strands of his hair brushing my skin. "Nothing is certain," he murmured. "The future is constantly changing, and no one can predict what will happen next. We have the power to change our destiny, because fate is not set in stone, and we are always free to make a choice." His fingers came up to brush my hair back, tucking it behind one ear. "A very powerful seer told me that, once. And she was right. That's why I'm not afraid of the oracle's prophecy, or the future. We are only slaves to fate if we let it control us. There is always a choice. — Julie Kagawa

The article goes on later to say, "Hope is not then something for the future alone, a sort of wishful thinking aout what might be; it offers meaning for us today. Christian hope is founded on certain faith that life is not a meaningless riddle, but a mystery progressively revealed and finding the fulfillment in the redemption won by Jesus Christ and offered to all peoples." — Raymond J. De Souza

Thus he went on growing steadily colder, a tiny planet offering a prophetic image of the greater, when gradually heat will withdraw from the earth, then life itself. Then the resurrection will have come to an end, for, however far forward into future generations the works of men may shine, there must none the less be men. If certain species hold out longer against the invading cold, when there are no longer any men, and if we suppose Bergotte's fame to have lasted until then, suddenly it will be extinguished for all time. It will not be the last animals that will read him, for it is scarcely probable that, like the Apostles at Pentecost, they will be able to understand the speech of the various races of mankind without having learned it. — Marcel Proust

Bitterness does not pay. Certain things have happened to all of us in the past and it is for us to forget those and to look to the future. — Susan Williams

I feel that I have a certain amount of experience and I'm still learning so much. But a director's job is so vast; they have so much to do with the preparation. You have to be great with all kinds of personalities and you have to be very patient, there's a lot of skills I'm not sure if I have. So I don't know if I'm ready to direct, but who knows what the future has. — Jason Statham

Everyone wants to be foremost in this future-and yet death and the stillness of death are the only things certain and common to all in this future! How strange that this sole thing that is certain and common to all, exercises almost no influence on men, and that they are the furthest from regarding themselves as the brotherhood of death! It makes me happy to see that men do not want to think at all of the idea of death! — Friedrich Nietzsche

The alchemists of past centuries tried hard to make the elixir of life: ... Those efforts were in vain; it is not in our power to obtain the experiences and the views of the future by prolonging our lives forward in this direction. However, it is well possible in a certain sense to prolong our lives backwards by acquiring the experiences of those who existed before us and by learning to know their views as well as if we were their contemporaries. The means for doing this is also an elixir of life. — Hermann Franz Moritz Kopp

I'm not sure what the Lord has in store for my future, but I can say for certain that music is not my life. Christ is my life. I love writing, singing, and playing songs that He gives me to share, but whatever He has for me in five or ten years, I want to be willing to step into it. I never want to hold so tightly to my vocation that I lose out on His higher plan. — Jeremy Camp

If there is anything certain in life, it is this. Time doesn't always heal. Not really. I know they say it does, but that is not true. What time does is to trick you into believing that you have healed, that the hurt of a great loss has lessened. But a single word, a note of a song, a fragrance, a knife point of dawn light across an empty room, any one of these things will take you back to that one moment you have never truly forgotten. These small things are the agents of memory. They are the sharp needle points piercing the living fabric of your life.

Life, my children, isn't linear where the heart is concerned. It is filled with invisible threads that reach out from your past and into your future. These threads connect every second we have lived and breathed. As your own lives move forward and as the decades pass, the more of these threads are cast. Your task is to weave them into a tapestry, one that tells the story of the time we shared. — Stephen Lee

village." The scholar, Lewis declares, has "lived in many times" and can thus challenge the automatic presumption of finality inherent in present judgements and trends: We need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion.58 — Alister E. McGrath

In that way Vinteuil's phrase, like some theme, say, in Tristan, which represents to us also a certain acquisition of sentiment, has espoused our mortal state, had endued a vesture of humanity that was affecting enough. Its destiny was linked, for the future, with that of the human soul, of which it was one of the special, the most distinctive ornaments. Perhaps it is not-being that is the true state, and all our dream of life is without existence; but, if so, we feel that it must be that these phrases of music, these conceptions which exist in relation to our dream, are nothing either. We shall perish, but we have for our hostages these divine captives who shall follow and share our fate. And death in their company is something less bitter, less inglorious, perhaps even less certain. — Marcel Proust

It is a great mistake to regard a certain object as pleasurable in itself and to store the idea of it in the mind in hope of fulfilling a want by its actual presence in the future. If objects were pleasurable in themselves, then the same dress or food would always please everyone, which is not the case. — Paramahansa Yogananda

To live moment to moment is the life of meditation. Then life becomes spontaneous without any effort; then nobody can make you miserable, nobody can disappoint you, nobody can make you a failure because in the first place you were not trying to be a success; you were not asking the future to be in a certain way. So whatever happens, the next moment you can rejoice. It is always your victory. — Rajneesh

Remember that the future is neither ours nor wholly not ours, so that we may neither count on it as sure to come nor abandon hope of it as certain not to be. — Epicurus

Sylvie's sort of pregnant. Well not sort of. She is. Pregnant. Actually pregnant with a baby.'
'Oh Dexter! Do you know the father? I'm kidding! Congratulations, Dex. God, aren't you meant to space your bombshells out a bit. Not just drop them all at once?'
She held his face in both hands, looked at it.
'You're getting married?-'
'Yes'
-'And you're going to be a father?'
'I know! Fuck me a father!'
'Is that allowed? I mean will they let you?'
'Apparently'
'I think it's wonderful. Fucking hell, Dexter, I turn my back for one minute ... !'
She hugged him once again her arms high round his neck. She felt drunk, full of affection and a certain sadness too, as if something was coming to an end. She wanted to say something along these lines, but thought it best to do this through a joke.
'Of course you've destroyed any chance I had of future happiness, but I'm delighted for you, really. — David Nicholls

In practice, some come to see easily, some with difficulty. But whatever the case, never mind. Difficult or easy, the Buddha said not to be heedless. Just that
don't be heedless. Why? Because life is not certain. Wherever we start to think that things are certain, uncertainty is lurking right there. Heedlessness is just holding things as certain. It is grasping at certainty where there is no certainty and looking for truth in things that are not true. Be careful! They are likely to bite you sometime in the future! — Ajahn Chah

Modern life seems to recede further and further away from nature, and closely connected with this fact we seem to be losing the feeling of reverence towards nature. It is probably inevitable when science and machinery, capitalism and materialism go hand in hand so far in a most remarkably successful manner. Mysticism, which is the life of religion in whatever sense we understand it, has come to be relegated altogether in the background. Without a certain amount of mysticism there is no appreciation for the feeling of reverence, and, along with it, for the spiritual significance of humility. Science and scientific technique have done a great deal for humanity; but as far as our spiritual welfare is concerned we have not made any advances over that attained by our forefathers. In fact we are suffering at present the worst kind of unrest all over the world. — D.T. Suzuki

The last few decades have been marked by a special cultivation of the romance of the future. We seem to have made up our minds to misunderstand what has happened; and we turn, with a sort of relief, to stating what will happen-which is apparently much easier ... The modern mind is forced towards the future by a certain sense of fatigue, not unmixed with terror, with which it regards the past. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Today we must abandon competition and secure cooperation. This must be the central fact in all our considerations of international affairs; otherwise we face certain disaster. Past thinking and methods did not prevent world wars. Future thinking must prevent wars ... The stakes are immense, the task colossal the time is short. But we may hope- we must hope- that man's own creation, man's own genius, will not destroy him. — Albert Einstein

The consciousness-expanding drugs - the hallucinogens, such as cannabis, mescaline, LSD, Psylocybin - I think are useful to a writer up to a certain point. That is, they open psychic areas that would not otherwise be available to the writer. But I feel that once these areas have been opened and the writer has reached them, he is able to get back there in the future without the drug. — William S. Burroughs

Eventually we must leave Earth-at least a certain number of our progeny must as our sun approaches the end of its solar life cycle. But just as terrestrial explorers have always led the way for settlers, this will also happen extraterrestrially. Earth is our cradle, not our final destiny. — Edgar Mitchell

For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future. — John F. Kennedy

When the outcome of a game is certain, we call it quits and begin another. This is why many
people object to having their fortunes told: not that fortunetelling is mere superstition or that the predictions would be horrible, but simply that the more surely the future is known, the less surprise and the less fun in living it. — Alan W. Watts

For I am inclined to believe that my beloved Arthur of the future is sitting at this very moment among his learned freinds, in the Combination Room of the College of Life, and that they are thinking away in there for all they are worth, about the best means to help our curious species: and I for one hope that some day, when not only England but the World has need of them, and when it is ready to listen to reason, if it ever is, they will issue forth from their rath in joy and power: and then perhaps, they will give us happiness in the world once more and chivalry, and the old medieval blessing of certain simple people - who tried, at any rate, in their own small way, to still the ancient brutal dream of Attila the Hun. — T.H. White

Yes, that resurrection does indeed give us a sure and certain hope. If that's not the case, we are of all people, as Paul says, most to be pitied.3 But when the New Testament strikes the great Easter bell, the main resonances it sets up are not simply about ourselves and about whatever future world God is ultimately going to make, when heaven and earth are joined together and renewed at last from top to bottom. Precisely because the resurrection has happened as an event within our own world, its implications and effects are to be felt within our own world, here and now. This — N. T. Wright

Future contingents cannot be certain to us, because we know them as such. They can be certain only to God whose understanding is in eternity above time. Just as a man going along a road does not see those who come after him; but the man who sees the whole road from a height sees all those who are going along the road at the same time. — Thomas Aquinas

The future is certain. It is just not known. — Johnny Rich

Talk about an ideal democracy! In the realm of time there is no aristocracy of wealth, and no aristocracy of intellect. Genius is never rewarded by even an extra hour a day. And there is no punishment. Waste your infinitely precious commodity as much as you will, and the supply will never be withheld from you. No mysterious power will say: - "This man is a fool, if not a knave. He does not deserve time; he shall be cut off at the meter." It is more certain than consols, and payment of income is not affected by Sundays. Moreover, you cannot draw on the future. Impossible to get into debt! You can only waste the passing moment. You cannot waste to-morrow; it is kept for you. You cannot waste the next hour; it is kept for you — Arnold Bennett

I learnt too late that what is most important to us is always most precious at the moment it occurs, and it is precious in its absolute immediacy and not as some vague confirmation of future directions; since the only certain fact, aside from death, is the flimsiness of everything. — Luke Davies

I realised that in refusing to take a vow man was drawn into temptation, and that to be bound by a vow was like a passage from libertinism to a real monogamous marriage. "I believe in effort, I do not want to bind myself with vows," is the mentality of weakness and betrays a subtle desire for the thing to be avoided. Or where can be the difficulty in making a final decision? I vow to flee from the serpent which I know will bite me, I do not simply make an effort to flee from him. I know that mere effort may mean certain death. Mere effort means ignorance of the certain fact that the serpent is bound to kill me. The fact, therefore, that I could rest content with an effort only, means that I have not yet clearly realised the necessity of definite action. "But supposing my views are changed in the future, how can I bind myself by a vow?" Such a doubt often deters us. But that doubt also betrays a lack of clear perception that a particular thing must be renounced. — Mahatma Gandhi

Within the biblical worldview (which has not so much been disproved as ignored in much modern thought), heaven and earth overlap, and do so at certain specific times and places, Jesus and the Spirit being the key markers. In the same way, at certain places and moments God's future and God's past (that is, events like Jesus's death and resurrection) arrive in the present
rather as though you were to sit down to a meal and discover your great-great-grandparents, and also your great-great-grandchildren, turning up to join you. That's how God's time works. — N. T. Wright

In describing the ways that religious and other types of communities appropriate and understand their histories, among both fundamentalists and non-fundamentalists, the sociologist Anthony Giddens utilizes the term "reflexivity" and states that it is the characteristic of "all human action." Reflexivity takes place when individuals and/or communities utilize their perceptions of their histories as a way of guiding their present and future actions. For Giddens, tradition is a means of "handling time and space, which asserts any particular activity or experience with the community of past, present, and future, these in turn being structured by recurrent social practices." In light of this, tradition is a set of entities which religious communities and cultures continually reconstruct within certain parameters. Religions are not completely static in that almost every new generation reinvents the religious and cultural inheritance from the generations that preceded it. — Jon Armajani

On January 18, 1915, six months into the First World War, as all Europe was convulsed by killing and dying, Virginia Woolf wrote in her journal, 'The future is dark, which is on the whole, the best thing the future can be, I think.' Dark, she seems to be saying, as in inscrutable, not as in terrible. We often mistake the one for the other. Or we transform the future's unknowability into something certain, the fulfillment of all our dread, the place beyond which there is no way forward. Be again and again, far stranger things happen than the end of the world. — Rebecca Solnit

My only certainty in life is that I shall one day die. I can be certain of nothing else in the future. But either we survive (and so far in human history a vast majority has always survived) and having survived when we might not have done so gives us what we call happiness; or we do not survive and do not know it. — John Fowles

For when you are approaching poverty, you make one discovery which outweighs all of the others ... the fact that it annihilates the future. Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have the less you worry.
When you have a hundred francs in the world you are liable to the most craven panics. When you have three francs left, you are quite indifferent ... you are bored but you are not afraid. You think vaguely "I shall be starving in a day or two- shocking, isn't it?" And then the mind wanders to other topics. A bread and margarine diet does, to some extent, provide its own anodyne. — George Orwell

It's funny how nothing really ever turns out the way we expect it to, no matter how certain the future seems. I guess we need to keep adjusting our dreams to fit reality, because life is not going to cooperate. — Cassia Leo