Quotes & Sayings About Uncertain Future

I genuinely did not expect more than half our nation to choose to walk away from our long-term allies into the arms of our new friends Vladimir Putin, Marine Le Pen and Donald Trump. Or that they would do so without an economic plan, a trading strategy, or a credible leader, making the average Briton's future more uncertain than any time since the Blitz. — Brian Reade

It is always a starkly private moment when a governor first apprehends his subject as a man - perhaps not as an equal, but at least as a being, irreducible, possessed of frailties, enthusiasms, a real past, and an uncertain future. — Eleanor Catton

Adam delayed only a second longer before traversing into the uncertain future, crossing the hidden divide; the fabric separating worlds. He moved from the shadows that paralleled the town, where unseen lives existed alongside of unsuspecting, oblivious people. With his seemingly mundane act of taking one step forward, he effectively walked from myth to reality. — J.M. Northup

Real Love for ourselves by definition includes every aspect of our lives - the good, the bad, the difficult, the challenging past, the uncertain future, as well as all the shameful, upsetting experiences and encounters we'd just as soon forget. — Sharon Salzberg

The bottom line for housing is that the concerns we used to hear about the possibility of a devastating collapse - one that might be big enough to cause a recession in the U.S. economy - while not fully allayed have diminished. Moreover, while the future for housing activity remains uncertain, I think there is a reasonable chance that housing is in the process of stabilizing, which would mean that it would put a considerably smaller drag on the economy going forward. — Janet Yellen

What an irony it is that these living beings whose shade we sit in,
whose fruit we eat, whose limbs we climb, whose roots we water, to
whom most of us rarely give a second thought, are so poorly
understood. We need to come, as soon as possible, to a profound
understanding and appreciation for trees and forests and the vital
role they play, for they are among our best allies in the uncertain
future that is unfolding. — Jim Robbins

She cried for the life she could not control. She cried for the mentor who had died before her eyes. She cried for the profound loneliness that filled her heart. But, above all, she cried for the future ... which suddenly felt so uncertain. — Dan Brown

But as your horizons contract - when you see the future ahead of you as finite and uncertain - your focus shifts to the here and now, to everyday pleasures and the people closest to you. — Atul Gawande

If New Orleans is not fully in the mainstream of culture, neither is it fully in the mainstream of time. Lacking a well-defined present, it lives somewhere between its past and its future, as if uncertain whether to advance or to retreat. Perhaps it is its perpetual ambivalence that is its secret charm. Somewhere between Preservation Hall and the Superdome, between voodoo and cybernetics, New Orleans listens eagerly to the seductive promises of the future but keeps at least one foot firmly planted in its history, and in the end, conforms, like an artist, not to the world but to its own inner being
ever mindful of its personal style. — Tom Robbins

Peril, loneliness, an uncertain future, are not oppressive evils, so long as the frame is healthy and the faculties are employed; so long, especially, as Liberty lends us her wings, and Hope guides us by her star. — Charlotte Bronte

There exists [a] word in German, Geschichte, which designates not accomplished history, but history in the present, doubtless determined in large part, yet only in part, by the already accomplished past; for a history which is present, which is living, is also open to a future that is uncertain, unforeseeable, not yet accomplished, and therefore aleatory. Living history obeys only a constant (not a law): the constant of class struggle. Marx did not use the term 'constant', which I have taken from Levi-Strauss, but an expression of genius: 'tendential law', capable of inflecting (but not contradicting) the primary tendential law, which means that a tendency does not possess the form or figure of linear law, but that it can bifurcate under the impact of an encounter with another tendency, and so on ad infinitum. At each intersection the tendency can take a path that is unforeseeable because it is aleatory. — Louis Althusser

I like to define biology as the history of the earth and all its life - past, present, and future. To understand biology is to understand that all life is linked to the earth from which it came; it is to understand that the stream of life, flowing out of the dim past into the uncertain future, is in reality a unified force, though composed of an infinite number and variety of separate lives. — Rachel Carson

The global economic outlook remains fragile and uncertain. Global economic imbalances persist and we must address them or risk future instability. — Julia Gillard

In class I was out of place because I could so easily be distracted from concepts by metaphors and facts. Clearly, I was less intelligent than I had hoped, and I felt frustrated by an inarticulate notion that something was wrong if old material was processed as if the immediate past and the uncertain future had no bearing on it. — Ruth Kluger

Past is dead
Future is uncertain;
Present is all you have,
So eat, drink and live merry. — Albert Einstein

Which would you like first?" You, Rafe said silently. The truth of that word rang loudly in his mind, body, heart, and whatever remained of his blackened soul. He wanted her. Wanted her more than he'd ever wanted anything in the world. And he was beginning to suspect and hope she wanted him too. But taking her wouldn't be right, not when her future was so uncertain and not when he was still a cripple, unable to hold her completely and worship her body in the manner she deserved. "Rafe? — Brooklyn Ann

If the past has uncertain effect on the present, there is no need to dwell on the past. And if the present has little effect on the future, — Alan Lightman

We recognized only one thing as our duty and destiny: every one of us had to become himself, had to be true to and live for the sake of the seed of nature at work in himself, so completely that the uncertain future would find us ready for anything and everything it might bring. — Hermann Hesse

Not moving because things are unfamiliar-and you haven't bothered to learn how to operate on them-I think is really a crime. The uncertain is the unknown and the unknown is the future, and you cannot predict the future. But the unfamiliar? You can learn how to operate in that. — Orit Gadiesh

Most people have learned to live in the moment. The argument goes that if the past has uncertain effect on the present, there is no need to dwell on the past. And if the present has little effect on the future, present actions need not be weighed for their consequence. Rather, each act is an island in time, to be judged on its own ... It is a world of impulse. It is a world of sincerity. It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning. — Alan Lightman

But the future is uncertain, and he can't get up enough enthusiasm even to masurbate. — M.R. Carey

Let us each of us now embrace with solemn duty, and awesome joy, what is our lasting birthright. With common effort and common purpose, with passion and dedication, let us answer the call of history and carry into an uncertain future that precious light of freedom. — Barack Obama

In the humanist world following Erasmus, man is at the centre of the universe. Man becomes largely responsible for his own destiny, behaviour and future. This is the new current of thought which finds its manifestation in the writing of the 1590s and the decades which follow. The euphoria of Elizabeth's global affirmation of authority was undermined in these years by intimations of mortality: in 1590 she was 57 years old. No one could tell how much longer her golden age would last; hence, in part, Spenser's attempts to analyse and encapsulate that glory in an epic of the age. This concern about the death of a monarch who - as Gloriana, the Virgin Queen - was both symbol and totem, underscores the deeper realisation that mortality is central to life. After the Reformation, the certainties of heaven and hell were less clear, more debatable, more uncertain. — Ronald Carter

If all you do at work is hope to survive, your day can't be much fun. We're all working too hard. Putting in more hours than we'd like, nervous about the future, uncertain about our roles and our goals. We work too hard to hope for mere survival. Our goal must be to thrive and prosper, not just get by. — Seth Godin

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

Religion often partakes of the myth of progress that shields us from the terrors of an uncertain future. — Frank Herbert

Let the future remain uncertain, for that is the canvas to receive our desires. — Brian Herbert

Every true history must force us to remember that the past was once as real as the present and as uncertain as the future. — G. M. Trevelyan

Speculating is the application of intellectual examination and systematic analysis to the problem of the uncertain future. — Jim Paul

We have been accustomed to make this existence worth-while by the belief that there is more than the outward appearance
that we live for a future beyond this life here. For the outward appearance does not seem to make sense. if living is to end in pain, incompleteness, and nothingness, it seems a cruel and futile experience for being who are born to reason, hope, create, and love. man, as a being of sense, wants his life to make sense, and he has found it hard to believe that it does so unless there is more that what he see
unless there is an eternal order and an eternal life behind the uncertain and momentary experience of life-and-death. — Alan W. Watts

Auto repair, piloting, skiing, perhaps even management: these are skills that yield to application, hard work, and native talent. But forecasting an uncertain future and deciding the best course of action in the face of that future are much less likely to do so. And much of what we've seen so far suggests that a large group of diverse individuals will come up with better and more robust forecasts and make more intelligent decisions than even the most skilled "decision maker." — James Surowiecki

He had always had a passion for life and the idealism he had come across seemed to him for the most part a cowardly shrinking from it. The idealist withdrew himself because he could not suffer the jostling of the human crowd; he had not the strength to fight and so called the battle vulgar; he was vain and since his fellows would not take him at his own estimate, consoled himself with despising his fellows. For Phillip, this type was Hayward, fair, languid, too fat now and rather bald, still cherishing the remains of his good looks and still delicately proposing to do exquisite things in the uncertain future; and at the back of this were whiskey and vulgar amours of the street. — W. Somerset Maugham

The instability of a white neighborhood under pressure from the very possibility of integration put the neighborhood into a kind of real estate purgatory. It set off a downward cycle of anticipation, in which worried whites no longer bought homes in white neighborhoods that might one day attract colored residents even if none lived there at the time. Rents and purchase prices were dropped "in a futile attempt to attract white residents," as Hirsch put it. With prices falling and the neighborhood's future uncertain, lenders refused to grant mortgages or made them more difficult to obtain. Panicked whites sold at low prices to salvage what equity they had left, giving the homeowners who remained little incentive to invest any further to keep up or improve their properties. — Isabel Wilkerson

I see a wonderful future in a very uncertain world. If we will cling to our values, if we will build on our inheritance, if we will walk in obedience before the Lord, if we will simply live the gospel we will be blessed in a magnificent and wonderful way. We will be looked upon as a peculiar people who have found the key to a peculiar happiness. — Gordon B. Hinckley

I have met too many people who are looking for work, worrying about their mortgage, uncertain about their health insurance, and doubting that things will get any better anytime soon. Not just concerned about the present, many of us are doubting the future. — Brad Schneider

That man is prudent who neither hopes nor fears anything from the uncertain events of the future. — Anatole France

The future of humanity is uncertain, even in
the most prosperous countries, and the quality
of life deteriorates; and yet I believe that what
is being discovered about the infinitely large
and infinitely small is sufficient to absolve this
end of the century and millennium. What a very
few are acquiring in knowledge of the physical
world will perhaps cause this period not to be
judged as a pure return of barbarism. — Primo Levi

Life presents itself as a continual deception, in small matters as well as in great. If it has promised, it does not keep its word, unless to show how little desirable the desired object was; hence we are deluded now by hope, now by what was hoped for. If it has given, it did so in order to take. The enchantment of distance shows us paradises that vanish like optical illusions, when we have allowed ourselves to be fooled by them. Accordingly, happiness lies always in the future, or else in the past, and the present may be compared to a small dark cloud driven by the wind over the sunny plain; in front of and behind the cloud everything is bright, only it itself always casts a shadow. Consequently, the present is always inadequate, but the future is uncertain, and the past irrecoverable. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The future remains uncertain and so it should, for it is the canvas upon which we paint our desires. Thus always the human condition faces a beautifully empty canvas. We possess only this moment in which to dedicate ourselves continuously to the sacred presence which we share and create. — Frank Herbert

I wonder if they'll be able to resist. It's not exactly easy to save things for the future when the present is so uncertain. — Ally Condie

Changes occur and expectations change. Reality brings new possibilities, while destroying some too. It's true: the future is uncertain. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

Really, each era has its own false nostalgia. We all put a picket fence up around something. For my generation it was the '50s, and for other generations it will be something else. Change is scary for everyone, as is complexity, contradiction, and an uncertain future. — Gary Ross

Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century's developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age. — Richard Lindzen

When the uncertain future becomes the past, the past in turn becomes uncertain. — Mohsin Hamid

I've never seen such a hunger in people for spiritual things ... People realize the past is gone, the future is uncertain, and the present seems to be hopeless. As a result, many [in Moscow] were open to God. — Billy Graham

You can't have the past. Only the future, and the future is, of course, completely uncertain. — Jean Oram

To get what you want, you have to know exactly how much you are willing to give up.
Never had he wanted something this badly, and held it in his hands knowing that tomorrow it would be gone, traded for the high cliffs of Ios, and the uncertain future across the border, the chance to stand before his brother, to ask him for all the answers that no longer seemed important. A kingdom, or this. — C.S. Pacat

The utility, or intrinsic value of gold as a commodity is now considerably less than in the past; its monetary status has become extraordinarily ambiguous; and its future is highly uncertain. — Benjamin Graham

And as the train whistled its imminent departure, a small girl wearing neat plaits and someone else's shoes climbed its iron stairs. Smoke filled the platform, people waved and hollered, a stray dog ran barking through the crowds. Nobody noticed as the little girl stepped over the shadowed threshold; not even Aunt Ada, who some might've expected to be sheperherding her orphaned niece towards her uncertain future. And so, when the essence of light and life that had been Vivien Longmeyer contracted itself for safekeeping and disappeared deep inside her, the world kept moving and nobody saw it happen. — Kate Morton

We live in a very uncertain world, and I think that uncertainty of itself generates an environment which we should not make a decision that deprives future generations of the deterrent effect that the nuclear weapons have provided for us and for almost all of my life. — Des Browne

Sometimes the clouds weren't weightless. Sometimes their bellies got dark and full. It was life. It happened. It didn't mean it wasn't scary, or that I wasn't still afraid, but now I knew that as long as I was standing under it with Braden beside me when those clouds broke, I'd be alright. We'd get rained on together. Knowing Braden he'd have a big ass umbrela to shelter us from the worst of it. That there was an uncertain future I could handle. — Samantha Young

If in the modern world wars have unfortunately to be fought (and they do, it seems) then they must be stopped at the first possible moment, otherwise they corrupt us, they create new problems and make our future even more uncertain. That is more than morality; it's sense. — Jawaharlal Nehru

We live in uncertain times when it comes to the future of life on Earth. — Jeff Corwin

But there's the rub. The present can never deliver one thing: meaning. The way of happiness and meaning are not the same. To find happiness, a man need only live in the moment; he need only live for the moment. But if he wants meaning
the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life
a man must reinhabit his past, however dark, and live for the future, however uncertain. Thus nature dangles happiness and meaning before us all, insisting only that we choose between them. — Jed Rubenfeld

How frail and ephemeral is the material substance of letters, which makes their very survival so hazardous. Print has a permanence of its own, though it may not be much worth preserving, but a letter! Conveyed by uncertain transportation, over which the sender has no control; committed to a single individual who may be careless or inappreciative; left to the mercy of future generations, of families maybe anxious to suppress the past, of the accidents of removals and house-cleanings, or of mere ignorance. How often it has been by the veriest chance that they have survived at all. — Elizabeth Drew

These are hard and uncertain times we're living in," he said. "You never know what will still be here tomorrow. That's why we must take joy every day in what we do have, so it's something we can carry in our memories when things change. — Jaye L. Knight

No graduation speaker will ever tell you that the future is anything but uncertain. It never is. But graduations need not only be obsessed with looking ahead; a graduation can be a day on which we turn back and trace our steps to see how we ended up where we are. — Taylor Mali

And then there's me, terribly afraid to step out of the box and date someone different. Afraid to get hurt in a different, more complex way - by somebody who I actually trust and care about. My biggest fear. Nice guy was a bad word to me because I feared that lurching-stomach feeling of losing someone I love. Nice meant future, and the future was always uncertain. — Alida Nugent

Anxiety, in short, is a conscious feeling. It can arise in a bottom-up way, driven by activity in defensive circuits or from higher processes that conceptualize worry, either about an uncertain future or about existence itself. — Joseph E. Ledoux

The paths people choose in life can lead to the creation or destruction of people, places, things, and relationships. The future is uncertain, but what is certain is there will be change. — Stephen Black

In the future if my mother tries to shame me with her disapproval, I will let her know in no uncertain terms that I reject her and all of her codependent baggage. I am Codependent No More. — Susan Juby

I was traumatizing her. I could only hope that at three she was too young to retain any of this in memory, that in the years to follow I could make up for any future need for therapy I was creating now. Could I? Or would she always have a deep insecurity, the kind that send people careening from one disastrous romance to the next? And why did I have to live my life obsessed with these kinds of concerns, this constant attempt to control the most uncertain of outcomes, my own effect on someone else's mind? — Leah Stewart

However, at 17 years old, I was ready to face any challenge and tackle any obstacles blocking the road to my dreams. I was ready to take on the world. I was unstoppable. Bygones were bygones. The future, however uncertain it might be, awaited me. — Teodor Flonta

Your future is uncertain, and I can tell you nothing that can help you. You are singular and dangerous, and so it is that you are sought by both the Dark and the Light. — Alison Croggon

Life changes when you least expect it to. The future is uncertain. So, seize this day, seize this moment, and make the most of it. — Jim Valvano

The future is no more uncertain than the present. — Walt Whitman

In Holland, every Monday evening my creative team meets to discuss fresh new ideas. We try to look at what's happening in the world. Are there trends? Are there new developments we should be aware of? And regularly we heard that people are uncertain about the future. People are sick and tired of the rules and regulations. — John De Mol Jr.

Most people have learned how to live in the moment. The argument goes that if the past has uncertain effect on the present, there is no need to dwell on the past. And if the present has little effect on the future, present actions need not be weighed in for their consequence. Rather, each act is an island in time to be judged on their own. — Alan Lightman

You can't prepare for the details of every single possible thing that might come your way in the future, because the future is uncertain. — Auliq Ice

Heralds don't sing about men who lived in orthodoxy or played it safe, they sing about men who lived an uncertain future and took enough risks to make your head spin. — Evan Meekins

Every man's life lies within the present; for the past is spent and done with, and the future is uncertain. — Marcus Aurelius

Our future is entirely within our own control. It is not at the mercy of any capricious or uncertain external power. — Charles F. Haanel

I stand in the sacred human presence. As I do now, so should you stand some day. I pray to your presence that this be so. Let the future remain uncertain for that is the canvas to receive our desires. Thus the human condition faces its perpetual tabula rasa. We possess no more than this moment where we dedicate ourselves continuously to the sacred presence we share and create. — Frank Herbert

A leader knows it's not so hard to die for your people. It's hard to order your people to die for you. And leading with certainty in an uncertain future doesn't require sight. It requires vision. It requires holding on. And no matter what happens, never letting go. — Paul Jenkins

when the Bible speaks of hope, it is not referring to a desire for a future outcome that is uncertain, but rather a desire for a future outcome that is absolutely sure. — R.C. Sproul

When we lack a sense of past and future, the present feels like a shaky platform, an uncertain basis for action. — Timothy Snyder

The past never quite disappeared, did it? Folks usually thought time moved forward, starting on the left and riding a right-pointing arrow into the future. Ruby didn't believe that. The future twisted uncertain, a shapeless dream, but the past - the past was set. It cast evidence behind it, photos and letters and bones, piling up in hidden places, waiting for the chance to spill out. An avalanche. A burial. The past consumed the future, always. — Brandy Heineman

We may be able to predict when it shall rain but the exact second when the first rain drop shall hit the ground is always uncertain all. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

With each passing month, I was introduced to other aspects of a new and pleasant world. Yet, though most of my days were spent in happy pursuit, always, underlying, was the tenuous feeling of an uncertain future. — Kathleen Grissom

A bishop friend who is known for his advocacy of controversial positions says his rule of thumb when uncertain about which course to choose is "Go with the future." Had he lived in Germany in 1932 and followed that rule of thumb he would have been a spirited supporter of Adolf Hitler. There is no "future" to guide our present decisions. There are only possible futures that we can strive to advance or resist. More precisely, there is no "future" until it happens, and then it is fleetingly the present on its way to becoming the past. Yet we persist in trying to dismiss proposals labeled as conservative because, we confidently proclaim, they are not of the future but of the past ... The commandments of the future are easier, of course, because we can make them up to our liking. — Richard John Neuhaus

When we truly fear God, our fear of other things and other people begins to wane. Big fears make little fears go away. We can spend our days worrying about a host of daily challenges, but let the word cancer be mentioned in the same sentence with our name, and all our daily anxieties disappear into the cloud of a bigger fear. God, of course, is not a malevolent force like cancer. This means that when our smaller fears are absorbed by fear of Him, our lives gain security rather than become debilitated by the terror of an uncertain future. — David Jeremiah

No one knows what the future holds, and loving something means you're willing to face an uncertain future together. That you're better together than apart. — Joanna Shupe

The observation of the numerous misfortunes that attend all conditions forbids us to grow insolent upon our present enjoyments, or to admire a man's happiness that may yet, in course of time, suffer change. For the uncertain future has yet to come, with all variety of future; and to him only to whom the divinity has [guaranteed] continued happiness until the end we may call happy. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Ari Shavit's My Promised Land is without question one of the most important books about Israel and Zionism that I have ever read ... This is the book that has the capacity to reinvent and reshape the long-overdue conversation about how Israel's complex past ought to shape its still-uncertain future. — Daniel Gordis

In the darkness of a thousand
withered souls, it was Er Lang's hand that I
sought, and his voice that I longed to hear. Perhaps
it is selfish of me, but an uncertain future
with him, in all its laughter and quarrels, is better
than being left behind. — Yangsze Choo

When man is born, the human race as well as the individual, he is thrown out of a situation which was definite, as definite as the instincts, into a situation which is indefinite, uncertain and open. There is certainty only about the past - and about the future only as far as that it is death. — Erich Fromm

The optimist regards the future as uncertain. — Eugene Wigner

Why do people put off travel until retirement? What are they saving it for? I understand that people want to be financially secure first, and pay off pension plans, but why consign the most active years of your life to drudgery? Why would you sacrifice today's freedom for a future that will always remain uncertain, no matter how carefully you plan for it? I'm not saying that everyone sitting in an office right this minute should drop everything and take off for Central Europe. I'm saying that if you want to see the world, plan for it and do it as soon as possible. The experience will give you the inspiration and fortitude you need to survive being a grown up. — Jessica Zafra

The future was uncertain, absolutely, and there were many hurdles, twists, and turns to come, but as long as I kept moving forward, one foot in front of the other, the voices of fear and shame, the messages from those who wanted me to believe that I wasn't good enough, would be stilled. — Chris Gardner

Every line we succeed in publishing today - no matter how uncertain the future to which we entrust it - is a victory wrenched from the powers of darkness. — Walter Benjamin

History constantly reminds us that in an uncertain world there is no visibility of prospects. Future earnings cannot be predicted with accuracy. — David Dreman

In the moral calculus of currently prevailing state capitalism, profits and bonuses in the next quarter greatly outweigh concern for the welfare of one's grandchildren, and since these are institutional maladies, they will not be easy to overcome. While much remains uncertain, we can assure ourselves, with fair confidence, that future generations will not forgive us our silence and apathy. — Noam Chomsky

To be hopeful means to be uncertain about the future, to be tender toward possibilities, to be dedicated to change all the way down to the bottom of your heart. — Rebecca Solnit

In a simpler world, perhaps unilateral power held by a single, smart, capable leader could rule the day. In a complex world, as we'll explore together, it takes a collective sharing of power, creativity, and perspectives to become agile and nuanced enough to lead into the uncertain future. — Jennifer Garvey Berger

A pessimist is a person who is always right but doesn't get any enjoyment out of it, while an optimist, is one who imagines that the future is uncertain. It is a duty to be an optimist, because if you imagine that the future is uncertain, then you mu — Victor Cherbuliez

If he wants meaning-the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life-a man must reinhabit his past, however dark, and live for the future, however uncertain. — Jed Rubenfeld

Everyone's future is, in reality, uncertain and full of unknown treasures from which all may draw unguessed prizes. — Lord Dunsany

Life is unresolved, confusing, bewildering, puzzling, ambiguous. You don't really know what's going to happen. The future is uncertain for everybody. — Woody Allen

Do we miss not only the past but every future the lost past describes? Is that just the nature of missing? All the lost might-have-beens? The certainty that those uncertain futures are gone? If we can't embrace uncertainty do we miss the point of love? — Mark Z. Danielewski