Wrong Predictions Quotes & Sayings

most importantly, this prediction is less of a prophecy and more a way of discussing our present choices. If the discussion makes us choose differently, so that the prediction is proven wrong, all the better. What's the point of making predictions if they cannot change anything? — Yuval Noah Harari

For his part, Mendeleev scanned Lecoq de Boisbaudran's data on gallium and told the experimentalist, with no justification, that he must have measured something wrong, because the density and weight of gallium differed from Mendeleev's predictions. This betrays a flabbergasting amount of gall, but as science philosopher-historian Eric Scerri put it, Mendeleev always "was willing to bend nature to fit his grand philosophical scheme." The only difference between Mendeleev and crackpottery is that Mendeleev was right: Lecoq de Boisbaudran soon retracted his data and published results that corroborated Mendeleev's predictions. — Sam Kean

If my fans think I can do everything I say I can do, then they're crazier than I am. After one of his fight predictions turned out to be wrong. — Muhammad Ali

It is a consolation or a misfortune that the wrong kind of people are too often correct in their prognostications of the future; the far-seeing are also the foolish. — Robbie Ross

The only thing that we know about financial predictions of start-ups is that 100 percent of them are wrong — Brad Feld

Most of Marx's predictions have failed to materialize, and his labor theory of value and other ideas have been proven wrong. Marx failed to recognize the incentive system built into the capitalist model - consumer choice and the profit motive of the entrepreneur. The irony is that capitalism, not socialism or Marxism, that has liberated the worker from the chains of poverty, monopoly, war, and oppression, and has better achieved Marx's vision of a millennium of hope, peace, abundance, leisure, and aesthetic expression for the 'full' human being. — Mark Skousen

Good," said the First Speaker. "And tell me, what do you think of all this. A finished work of art, is it not?"
"Definitely!"
"Wrong! It is not." This, with sharpness. "It is the first lesson you must unlearn. The Seldon Plan is neither complete nor correct. Instead, it is merely the best that could be done at the time. Over a dozen generations of men have pored over these equations, worked at them, taken them apart to the last decimal place, and put them together again. They've done more than that. They've watched nearly four hundred years pass and against the predictions and equations, they've checked reality, and they have learned. — Isaac Asimov

In all probability, the man who found the horoscope would also catch Nut and Nutcracker. They had to believe all the more strongly in the astrologer's new forecast since none of his predictions had ever come true. Sooner or later, his prognoses had to be right, given that the king, who could never be wrong, had made him his Grand Augur. — E.T.A. Hoffmann

I cannot give any assurances. I'm not in that business. I haven't been, and I don't intend to get into it. People who try to make predictions about things or assurances often find they're wrong. — Donald Rumsfeld

Any believable prediction will be wrong. Any correct prediction will be unbelievable. — Kevin Kelly

But though predictions may be wrong, they are right about the people who voice them, not about their future but about their experience of the present moment — Milan Kundera

What do you call an economist with a prediction? Wrong. — Robert Kuttner

I never make a prediction that can be proved wrong within 24 hours. — Louis Rukeyser

For me personally, the technology that has taken the most unexpected turn in my lifetime is what I refer to as 'the device formerly known as the cell phone.' I still remember many predictions that by 2000 there would only be about a million cell phone users. Boy, were they ever wrong! — Padmasree Warrior

All predictions are wrong, that's one of the few certainties granted to mankind. — Milan Kundera

Essentially, the frequentist approach toward statistics seeks to wash its hands of the reason that predictions most often go wrong: human error. — Nate Silver

And it's interesting, when you look at the predictions made during the peak of the boom in the 1990s, about e-commerce, or internet traffic, or broadband adoption, or internet advertising, they were all right - they were just wrong in time. — Chris Anderson

Predictions that unit cohesion could not survive honesty about sexual orientation were simply wrong. What does threaten morale arethe prolonged investigations, the questioning of friends and co-workers, the searches of barracks for magazines and letters, the witch hunts. — Anna Quindlen

We want to get 80%-85% of predictions right, not 100%. Or else we calibrated our estimates in the wrong way. — Nate Silver

I don't make mistakes. I make predictions which immediately turn out to be wrong. — Tony Benn

All buildings are predictions. All predictions are wrong. — Stewart Brand

On my seventh birthday, my father swore, for the first of many times, that I would die facedown in a cesspool. On that same occasion, my mother, with all the accompanying mystery and elevated language appropriate for a prominent diviner, turned her cards, screamed delicately, and proclaimed that my doom was written in water and blood and ice. As for me, from about that time and for twenty years since, I had spat on my middle finger and slapped the rump of every aingerou I noticed, murmuring the sincerest, devoutest prayer that I might prove my parents' predictions wrong. Not so much that I feared the doom itself - doom is just the hind end of living, after all - but to see the two who birthed me confounded. — Carol Berg

Your guess [about the future of technology] is as good as mine. The only thing I'm sure of is (a) most of the predictions I hear are almost certainly wrong, and (b) the things that will turn out to be important will come as a surprise, even though in hindsight they'll seem perfectly obvious. — Steve Krug

I figure lots of predictions is best. People will forget the ones I get wrong and marvel over the rest. — Alan Cox

Whenever people have used religious documents to make accurate predictions about our base knowledge of the physical world, they have been famously wrong. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

If the facts are contrary to any predictions, then the hypothesis is wrong no matter how appealing. — David Douglass