Future Prediction Quotes & Sayings

Though it accounts for only 2 percent of the body's mass, it uses up a fifth of all the oxygen we breathe, and it's where a quarter of all our glucose gets burned. The brain is the most energetically expensive piece of equipment in our body, and has been ruthlessly honed by natural selection to be efficient at the tasks for which it evolved. One might say that the whole point of our nervous system, from the sensory organs that feed information to the glob of neurons that interprets it, is to develop a sense of what is happening in the present and what will happen in the future, so that we can respond in the best possible way. Strip away the emotions, the philosophizing, the neuroses, and the dreams, and our brains, in the most reductive sense, are fundamentally prediction and planning machines. — Joshua Foer

The idea that the future is unpredictable is undermined every day by the ease with which the past is explained. — Daniel Kahneman

I succumbed to the lure of the oracle, he thought.
And he sensed that succumbing to this lure might be to fix himself upon a single-track life. Could it be, he wondered, that the oracle didn't tell the future? Could it be that the oracle made the future? — Frank Herbert

That Muhammad could predict certain events does not prove that he was a prophet: he may have been able to guess successfully, but this does not mean that he had real knowledge of the future. And certainly the fact that he was able to recount events from the past does not prove that he was a prophet, because he could have read about those events in the Bible and, if he was illiterate, he could still have had the Bible read to him. — Muhammad Al Warraq

Spontaneity is a meticulously prepared art — Oscar Wilde

Hope is not a prediction of the future, it's a declaration of what's possible. — Yogi Bhajan

What does the future look like? I don't know how to answer this question, but for the bettering of man's future, I would like for a civilization of knowledge to exist on our planet in the not too distant future. — Eraldo Banovac

If the brain is a prediction engine, memory is its fuel. We can argue that the only reason we need memory of the past is so we can inform the future. — Carmen Simon

No one knows the future, yet we can't stop guessing while expecting of only the good, and not the bad or even both. — Auliq Ice

There's no real objection to escapism, in the right places ... We all want to escape occasionally. But science fiction is often very far from escapism, in fact you might say that science fiction is escape into reality ... It's a fiction which does concern itself with real issues: the origin of man; our future. In fact I can't think of any form of literature which is more concerned with real issues, reality. — Arthur C. Clarke

You create your future by what you do in the present — Bangambiki Habyarimana

The book known by the name of the Apocalypse, has seemed to be until now unintelligible, merely because people persisted to see in it a real prediction of the future, which every one has explained after his own fashion, and in which they have always found what they wanted, namely anything but that, what the book contained. — Charles-Francois Dupuis

The prediction of the future is not distinguished from an evaluation of current evidence - prediction matches evaluation. This is perhaps the best evidence we have for the role of substitution. — Daniel Kahneman

With high hope for the future, no prediction is ventured. — Abraham Lincoln

There is no justifiable prediction about how the hypothesis will hold up in the future; its degree of corroboration simply is a historical statement describing how severely the hypothesis has been tested in the past. — Robert Nozick

Okay we both know... what happens... with sex... different places... different time... different date... different rooms... the biatch is still bitchy.... very bitchy as pitchy.... The agony - DOOOOOO YOU FEEL IT?

- wE JUST PREDICTED THE FUTURE! — Deyth Banger

Nobody believes a weather prediction twelve hours ahead. Now we're being asked to believe a prediction that goes out 100 years into the future? And make financial investments based on that prediction? Has everybody lost their minds? — Michael Crichton

Can you see the future, Kerbouchard?"
"Who would wish to? Our lives hold a veil between anticipation and horror. Anticipation is the carrot suspended before the jackass to keep him moving forward. Horror is what he would see if he took his eyes off the carrot. — Louis L'Amour

Chase said, "It was a crazy idea." An impossible idea.
"Nothing is impossible, Chase, only improbable. And when you can see into the future and manipulate people into the right places, you can accomplish amazing things."
"I think I liked the idea better when it was in my head. — Adrienne Wilder

I shall go further and say that even if an examination of the past could lead to any valid prediction concerning man's future, that prediction would be the contrary of reassuring. — Julien Benda

It is very difficult to make an accurate prediction, especially about the future. — Niels Bohr

To me, the conclusion that the public has the ultimate responsibility for the behavior of even the biggest businesses is empowering and hopeful, rather than disappointing. My conclusion is not a moralistic one about who is right or wrong, admirable or selfish, a good guy or a bad guy. My conclusion is instead a prediction, based on what I have seen happening in the past. Businesses have changed when the public came to expect and require different behavior, to reward businesses for behavior that the public wanted, and to make things difficult for businesses practicing behaviors that the public didn't want. I predict that in the future, just as in the past, changes in public attitudes will be essential for changes in businesses' environmental practices. — Jared Diamond

Fellow countrymen: At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first ... The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured ... — Abraham Lincoln

Revision and prediction seem like wastes of time. As much as I'd like to have a handle on the past and future, the moment I live in is the one I have. Here is how the moment instructs me: clouds float in front of the moon's face, lights flicker in the carved heads of pumpkins, leaves rise in the wind at random, saints go nameless, love comforts, souls sing beyond the reach of bodies. — Thomas Lynch

The theory of the earth is the science which describes and explains changes that the terrestrial globe has undergone from its beginning until today, and which allows the prediction of those it shall undergo in the future. The only way to understand these changes and their causes is to study the present-day state of the globe in order to gradually reconstruct its earlier stages, and to develop probable hypotheses on its future state. Therefore, the present state of the earth is the only solid base on which the theory can rely. — Horace-Benedict De Saussure

Malthus argued a century and a half ago that man, by using up all his available resources, would forever press on the limits of subsistence, thus condemning humanity to an indefinite future of misery and poverty. We can now begin to hope and, I believe, know that Malthus was expressing not a law of nature, but merely the limitation then of scientific and social wisdom. The truth or falsity of his prediction will depend now, with the tools we have, on our own actions, now and in the years to come. — John F. Kennedy

Recent brain scans have shed light on how the brain simulates the future. These simulation are done mainly in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the CEO of the brain, using memories of the past. On one hand, simulations of the future may produce outcomes that are desirable and pleasurable, in which case the pleasure centers of the brain light up (in the nucleus accumbens and the hypothalamus). On the other hand, these outcomes may also have a downside to them, so the orbitofrontal cortex kicks in to warn us of possible dancers. There is a struggle, then, between different parts of the brain concerning the future, which may have desirable and undesirable outcomes. Ultimately it is the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex that mediates between these and makes the final decisions. (Some neurologists have pointed out that this struggle resembles, in a crude way, the dynamics between Freud's ego, id, and superego.) — Michio Kaku

Prediction is difficult, especially the future. — Niels Bohr

Prediction from a grown-up: Your future is going to be amazing. You will surprise yourself with what you're capable of and the incredible things you go on to do. Find the people who love and believe in you - there will be lots of them. — Hillary Clinton

Prediction," as Niels Bohr liked to say, "is very difficult, especially if it's about the future. — Steven D. Levitt

Perhaps the safest prediction we can make about the future is that it will surprise us. — George Leonard

When a photographer chooses a subject, he or she is making a claim on the interest and attention of future viewers, a prediction about what will be thought to have been important. — Frank Gohlke

The present writer had occasion, some time ago, to call attention to the succession of layers of "laws of nature," each layer containing more general and more encompassing laws than the previous one and its discovery constituting a deeper penetration into the structure of the universe than the layers recognized before. However, the point which is most significant in the present context is that all these laws of nature contain, in even their remotest consequences, only a small part of our knowledge of the inanimate world. All the laws of nature are conditional statements which permit a prediction of some future events on the basis of the knowledge of the present, except that some aspects of the present state of the world, in practice the overwhelming majority of the determinants of the present state of the world, are irrelevant from the point of view of the prediction. — Eugene Paul Wigner

Is not happening yet," contributes Boris. "Singularity implies infinite rate of change achieved momentarily. Future not amenable thereafter to prediction by presingularity beings, right? So has not happened. — Charles Stross

Rainbows are yesterday's storm... — Nanette L. Avery

Nobody wants a prediction that the future will be more or less like the present, even if that is, statistically speaking, an excellent prediction. — Nathan Myhrvold

The fate of man does not chase him as much as he chases his fate. — Raheel Farooq

because my childhood became all about prediction, I learned to live in the future. I didn't feel things in the present because I wanted to be a moving target, gone to the future before any blow could really be felt. — Gavin De Becker

Let her have today.Leave tomorrow to the angels. — Kami Garcia

Predictions of the future are never anything but projections of present automatic processes and procedures, that is, of occurrences that are likely to come to pass if men do not act and if nothing unexpected happens; every action, for better or worse, and every accident necessarily destroys the whole pattern in whose frame the prediction moves and where it finds its evidence. — Hannah Arendt

Already man uses innumerable gadgets to displace the work done by bodily organs in the animals, and it would surely be in line with this tendency to externalize the reasoning functions of the brain
and thus hand over the government of life to electromagnetic monsters. In other words, the interests and goals of rationality are not those of man as a whole organism. If we are to live for the future, and to make the chief work of the mind prediction and calculation, man must eventually become a parasitic appendage to a mass of clockwork. — Alan W. Watts

The man of true genius never lives before his time, he never undertakes impossibilities, and always embarks on his enterprise at the suitable place and period. Though he may catch a glimpse of the coming light as it gilds the mountain top long before it reaches the eyes of his contemporaries, and he may hazard a prediction as to the future, he acts with the present. — Joseph Henry

I was not predicting the future, I was trying to prevent it. — Ray Bradbury

Cultural products will spread faster and wider when everybody can see what everybody else is doing. It suggests that the future of many hit-making markets will be fully open, radically transparent, and very, very unequal. — Derek Thompson

Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future. — Niels Bohr

You cannot see the past that did not happen any more than you can foresee the future. — Madeleine L'Engle

Prophecy and prescience - How can they be put to the test in the face of the unanswered question? Consider: How much is actual prediction of the "wave form" (as Muad'Dib referred to his vision-image) and how much is the prophet shaping the future to fit the prophecy? What of the harmonics inherent in the act of prophecy? Does the prophet see the future or does he see a line of weakness, a fault or cleavage that he may shatter with words or decisions as a diamond-cutter shatters his gem with a blow of a knife? — Frank Herbert

I never understood why people from the 1980s thought there would be flying cars. It just seemed really dangerous and impractical to me, but they all talked about it, so it must have been a thing. Meanwhile, my dream for the future was that it wouldn't involve mass extinction and large-scale water shortages and cannibalism. — Dan Chaon

One may say that predictions are dangerous particularly for the future. If the danger involved in a prediction is not incurred, no consequence follows and the uncertainty principle is not violated. — Edward Teller

Just because a prediction is true, doesn't mean that it is not false. — Lionel Suggs

The mere exposure effect explains many facets of our lives, such as why it's so hard to find someone who can prepare our childhood favorites like Mom did, and it also holds when we see the latest fashion trends prominently featured in stores, catalogs, and finally on people we know.
In addition, when a trend emerges, it sends the message that it's becoming increasingly accepted. When we see the supplies of multiple independent retailers simultaneously shift in one way, we assume the demand has shifted as well. Of course, the change may actually be driven by the prediction of a future shift in demand, which may or may not materialize, but it still affects people's choices. — Sheena Iyengar

A time will come when men will stretch out their eyes. They should see planets like our Earth. — Christopher Wren

The past is democratic, because it is a people. The future is despotic, because it is a caprice. Every man is alone in his prediction, just as each man is alone in a dream. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Security analysis does not assume that a past average will be repeated, but only that it supplies a rough index to what may be expected of the future. A trend, however, cannot be used as a rough index; it represents a definite prediction of either better or poorer results, and it must be either right or wrong. — Benjamin Graham

My biggest prediction for the future is that people are going to start looking after individual investors. — John C. Bogle

Prediction is difficult- particularly when it involves the future. — Mark Twain

This is my prediction for the future: Whatever hasn't happened will happen, and no one will be safe from it. — John B. S. Haldane

I say decisively that nothing is so marked in modern writing as the prediction of such ideals in the future combined with the ignoring of them in the past. Anyone — G.K. Chesterton

You don't need to predict the future. Just choose a future
a good future, a useful future
and make the kind of prediction that will alter human emotions and reactions in such a way that the future you predicted will be brought about. Better to make a good future than predict a bad one. — Isaac Asimov

The future is the result of actions, and actions are the result of behavior, and behavior is the result of prediction. — David McRaney

You know," he said by way of greeting, "the night I caught you with Layne, I called you a future felon. I didn't realize you'd make good on that prediction so quickly."
"That night you dragged Layne out of my driveway, I called you an asshole. Guess we were both right. — Brigid Kemmerer

The trend is, in fact, a statement of future prospects in the form of an exact prediction. — Benjamin Graham

Director of Ensuring the Future — Dave Eggers

But Amanda ... " Jadina said, looking past Maylin at the young Fate. "She doesn't ask for anything. She doesn't even try to read the future, it's just there. She ends up blurting things out. Starts talking about the car accident you're going to have in three years, or your baby boy dying in child birth in a few months, or your grandmother's funeral next year. Thing's you can't change even if you know about them. Things you're happier not knowing about. People go through life, happily oblivious. If you start telling them all the horrible things that are coming, they get upset. When those horrible things start coming true, they get scared and blame you. They say you caused it. Label you witch. Even burn you at the stake. She's safer in there. — Crissy Moss

Prediction is very hard, particularly when it's about the future. — Yogi Berra

We were meant to rescue each other, not cut down the forest to rescue one. — Shannon L. Alder

IT (The country) IS HEADED TOWARD OVERSIMPLIFICATION. YOU WANT TO SEE A PRESIDENT OF THE FUTURE? TURN ON ANY TELEVISION ON ANY SUNDAY MORNING - FIND ONE OF THOSE HOLY ROLLERS: THAT'S HIM, THAT'S THE NEW MISTER PRESIDENT! AND DO YOU WANT TO SEE THE FUTURE OF ALL THOSE KIDS WHO ARE GOING TO FALL IN THE CRACKS OF THIS GREAT, BIG, SLOPPY SOCIETY OF OURS? I JUST MET HIM; HE'S A TALL, SKINNY, FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD BOY NAMED "DICK." HE'S PRETTY SCARY. WHAT'S WRONG WITH HIM IS NOT UNLIKE WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE TV EVANGELIST - OUR FUTURE PRESIDENT. WHAT'S WRONG WITH BOTH OF THEM IS THAT THEY'RE SO SURE THEY'RE RIGHT! THAT'S PRETTY SCARY - THE FUTURE, I THINK, IS PRETTY SCARY. — John Irving

The future is like a corridor into which we can see only by the light coming from behind. — Edward Weyer Jr.

The only future we count is the time and the moments we can take a breath and leave a word for the future coming generations. — Auliq Ice

You couldn't predict what was going to happen for one simple reason: people. — Sara Sheridan

We base our ideas about the world on our personal experience, and that experience has ingrained the rate of growth of the recent past in our heads as "the way things happen." We're also limited by our imagination, which takes our experience and uses it to conjure future predictions - but often, what we know simply doesn't give us the tools to think accurately about the future. When we hear a prediction about the future that contradicts our experience-based notion of how things work, our instinct is that the prediction must be naive. If I tell you [...] that you may live to be 150, or 250, or not die at all, your instinct will be, "That's stupid - if there's one thing I know from history, it's that everybody dies." And yes, no one in the past has not died. But no one flew airplanes before airplanes were invented either. — Tim Urban

Prediction requires knowing about technologies that will be discovered in the future, but that very knowledge would almost automatically allow us to start developing those technologies right away. Ergo we do not know what we will know. — Nicholas Nassim Taleb

The only thing I cannot predict is the future — Amit Trivedi

Accurate prediction of the future, of its technologies and traumas, has always seemed to me to be the least interesting thing about science fiction.
The Killer Hook. — Michael Chabon

It is critical to learn how to listen for what is not being said. — Debra Kaye

It is difficult and even dangerous to make predictions - especially about the future - of the bilateral relationship. — Patrick Mendis

Social dynamic theory is philosophy, not politics. There can't be only one correct answer, or there would only be one book. Sharon L Reddy, Worldcon, 1995. — Sharon L. Reddy

The Home Secretary, a young man of thirty-seven, impossible to ignore, who, from his inappropriate post, had pelted the Prime Minister during the crisis with ideas on naval and military strategy, all of them quite sound, had produced an astonishingly accurate prediction of the future course of the fighting, and who had no doubts whatever about what needed to be done. The Home Secretary was Winston Churchill. — Barbara W. Tuchman

The lesson of every extinction, says the Smithsonian's Doug Erwin, is that we can't predict what the world will be 5 million years later by looking at the survivors.
There will be plenty of surprises. Let's face it: who would've predicted the existence of turtles? Who would ever have imagined that an organism would essentially turn itself inside out, pulling its shoulder girdle inside its ribs to form a carapace? If turtles didn't exist, no vertebrate biologist would've suggested that anything would do that: he'd have been laughed out of town. The only real prediction you can make is that life will go on. And that it will be interesting. — Alan Weisman

Storytelling
that's not the future. The future, I'm afraid, is flashes and impulses. It's mode up of moments and fragments, and stories won't survive. — Dexter Palmer

In all sorts of markets - music, film, art, and politics - the future of popularity will be harder to predict as the broadcast power of radio and television democratizes and the channels of exposure grow.... The gatekeepers had their day. Now there are simply too many gates to keep. — Derek Thompson

I'm a historian. The act of predicting the future discomfits me, in any event - and the bigger the prediction, the more distrusting I am. — Rick Perlstein

However, robust evidence shows that people systematically overestimate the probability of positive future contingencies, and underestimate the probability of negative ones - only those who are depressed or dysphoric come to accurate assessments. — Daniel Nettle

Prediction is a very difficult business, particularly about the future — Fred Singer

The future is always unknown. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The people who demand that the oracle predict for them really want to know next year's price on whalefur or something equally mundane. None of them wants an instant-by-instant prediction of his personal life. — Frank Herbert

I never assume anything. I anticipate the possibilities and allow my imagination to create the future. — Lionel Suggs