Quotes about the future
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“Would you like to know your future?

If your answer is yes, think again. Not knowing is the greatest life motivator.

So enjoy, endure, survive each moment as it comes to you in its proper sequence -- a surprise.”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

Life, Motivation, Thinking

“There's the life you live and the life you leave behind. but what you share with someone else - especially someone you love - that's not just how you bury your past. It's how you write you future.”

Brad Meltzer book The Book of Lies

Source: The Book of Lies

Love, Life, Past

“Your past is my Future.”

Dean Koontz book Lightning

Lightning

Past

“When the uncertain future becomes the past, the past in turn becomes uncertain.”

Mohsin Hamid Moth Smoke

Source: Moth Smoke

Past

“The past was gone and the future had yet to unfold, and he knew he should focus his life on the present…yet his day-to-day existence suddenly struck him as endless and unbearable.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Choice

Travis Parker, Chapter 22, p. 258-259
Source: 2000s, The Choice (2007)

Life, Past

“The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Life, Fools, Question, Wise

“We always live at the time we live and not at some other time, and only by extracting at each present time the full meaning of each present experience are we prepared for doing the same thing in the future.”

John Dewey book Experience and Education

Source: Experience and Education

Time

“He was a man without a past, whose future was the imminent grave and whose present was a bitter fever of living.”

Jack London Martin Eden

Source: Martin Eden

Past

“the mind of man is capable of anything--because everything is in it, all the past as well as the future”

Joseph Conrad book Heart of Darkness

Source: Heart of Darkness

Past

“The past was always there, lived inside of you, and it helped to make you who you were. But it had to be placed in perspective. The past could not dominate the future.”

Barbara Taylor Bradford (1933) British author

Source: Unexpected Blessings

Past, Help

“We can become inspired to shape a higher, more ideal future, and when we do, miracles happen.”

James Redfield book The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision

Source: The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision

“Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance. Good-by is short and final, a word with teeth sharp to bite through the string that ties past to the future.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent

Past, Goodbye

“[W]e must never allow the future to collapse under the burden of memory.”

Milan Kundera book The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Source: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Memory

“Apocalypse is a frame of mind." [Nicodemus] said then. "A belief. A surrender to inevitability. It is a despair for the future. It is the death of hope.”

Jim Butcher book Death Masks

Source: Death Masks

Death, Hope, Despair

“You have to choose your future regrets.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

“I needed to choose between the one thing that really filled m thoughts-my love for that woman-and losing my freedom and all the choices that the future promised me. To be honest, the decision was easy.
-Lukas Jessen-Petersen”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: The Witch Of Portobello

Love, Decision, Freedom

“He who spends time regretting the past loses the present and risks the future.”

Francisco de Quevedo (1584–1645) Spanish writer

Time, Past

“Life must go on, even if it's no joke… just pretend to believe in the future.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book North

Source: North

Life

“Knowing too much of your future is never a good thing.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

“It is all connected Dominick," she said. "Life is not a series of isolated ponds & puddles; life is this river you see below, before you. It flows from the past through the present on it's way to the future.”

Wally Lamb book I Know This Much Is True

Source: I Know This Much Is True

Life, Way, Past

“In the future everyone will have their fifteen minutes of fame”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

When asked about this quote, he would corrupt it intentionally, including:
1968 - 1974

“it’s only by studying the mistakes of the past,” Lucien
said mildly, “that we can even have a future”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Insatiable

Study, Past

“But they wanted you. Time is not something you give back. The very next moment may be answer to your prayer. To deny that is to deny the most important part of the future.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The Time Keeper

Time, Parting

“You could give me the past,“ he said a little sadly. “But Alec is my future.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Past

“Then he thought himself unhappy, but happiness was all in the future; now he felt that the best happiness was already in the past.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

Happiness, Past

“The future was with Fate. The present was our own.

~ The Poison Belt”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Fate

“You are the only young man that I know of who ignores the fact that the future becomes the present, the present the past and the past turns into everlasting regret if you don't plan for it!”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Amanda, Scene Five
Source: The Glass Menagerie (1944)

Past

“Creative work is more accurately a machine that digs down and finds stuff, emotional stuff that will someday be raw material that can be used to produce more stuff, stuff like itself - clay to be available for future use.”

David Byrne (1952) Scottish alternative rock musician and promoter of world music

Source: Bicycle Diaries

“It is man's consolation that the future is to be a sunrise instead of a sunset.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Que l'avenir soit un orient au lieu d'être un couchant, c'est la consolation de l'homme.
Part I, Book II, Chapter II, Section V
William Shakespeare (1864)
Source: Les Misérables

“The Three Oddest Words

When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.
When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.
When I pronounce the word nothing,
I make something no nonbeing can hold.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

Silence, Past

“To hell with the future. It's a man-eating idol.”

Ivan Illich (1926–2002) austrian philosopher and theologist

Hell

“But I intend to enjoy the weeks I have left with you to the fullest. Because I know from my study of the philosophy of time, whatever is going to happen in the future is already unavoidable.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Queen of Babble Gets Hitched

Study, Time

“But love has to be stronger than hate, or there is no future for us.”

Kristin Hannah book The Nightingale

Source: The Nightingale

Love, Hate

“Run faster, jump higher, reach farther, and you'll always win!

live life expecting the worst, hoping for the best, and living for the future!

Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.”

Jerry Garcia (1942–1995) American musician and member of the Grateful Dead

Life, Hope

“Think! There's nothing certain in our future! All we can hope for is a vague continuation. But in spite of that, you're going to keep on living. You can't give up on life just because it's vague. It's a question of possibilities…”

Kōji Suzuki book Ring

Source: Ring

Life, Hope, Question, Thinking

“Wizard's Seventh Rule
Life is the future, not the past.”

Terry Goodkind book The Pillars of Creation

Source: The Pillars of Creation

Life, Past

“Everywhere I looked, demons of the future [were] on the battlegrounds of one’s emotional plane.”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

“O little one,
My little one,
Come with me,
Your life is done.

Forget the future,
Forget the past.
Life is over:
Breathe your last.”

Clive Barker book Abarat

Source: Abarat

Life, Past, Forgetting

“Futures not achieved are only branches of the past: dead branches.”

Italo Calvino book Invisible Cities

Source: Invisible Cities

Past, Dead

“But, in her life, nothing was going to happen. Such was the will of God! The future was a dark corridor, and at the far end the door was bolted.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

Life, God

“Many people see happiness only in their future.”

François Lelord book Hector and the Search for Happiness

Source: Hector and the Search for Happiness

Happiness, People

“Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future too.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Change, Past

“We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Past, Wise

“I'm not sure what we're running from. Nobody. Or the future. Fate. Growing up. Getting old. Picking up the pieces. As if running we won't have to get on with our lives.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Fate

“Until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words,-Wait and hope.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Wisdom, God, Hope, Waiting

“The Past is the textbook of tyrants; the Future is the Bible of the Free.”

Herman Melville book White-Jacket

Source: White-Jacket

Past

“This is the first age that's ever paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since we may not have one.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

As quoted in The Peter Plan : A Proposal for Survival (1976) by Laurence J. Peter
1970s

Age

“I regret how much I believed in the future.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“At the halfway point of any drunken night, there is a moment when an Indian realizes he cannot turn back toward tradition and that he has no map to guide him toward the future.”

Sherman Alexie (1966) Native American author and filmmaker

Night

“The future is there… looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become.”

William Gibson book Pattern Recognition

Source: Pattern Recognition

Sense

“In times of pain, when the future is too terrifying to contemplate and the past too painful to remember, I have learned to pay attention to right now. The precise moment I was in was always the only safe place for me.”

Julia Cameron book The Artist's Way

Source: The Artist's Way

Pain, Learning, Time, Past

“People long to go backward in their imagination as well as forward. We don't wish simply to exist forever in some future; we wish to have existed in some distant past.”

Gloria Whelan (1923) British children's writer

Source: Parade of Shadows

People, Imagination, Distant, Past

“When you begin to realize that your past does not necessarily dictate the outcome of your future, then you can release the hurt. It is impossible to inhale new air until you exhale the old.”

T.D. Jakes (1957) American bishop

Source: Healing the Wounds of the Past

Past, Hurt, Hurtful

“It would have really cramped my future plans had I died. (Nick)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infinity

“The taste of the usual was like cinders in his mouth, and there were moments when he felt as if he were being buried alive under his future.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

“Life is a series of collisions with the future; it is not the sum of what we have been, but what we yearn to be.”

José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955) Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist

Life

“the work of salvation, in its full sense, is (1) about whole human beings, not merely souls; (2) about the present, not simply the future; and (3) about what God does through us, not merely what God does in and for us.”

N.T. Wright (1948) Anglican bishop

God, Soul, Sense

“Because this is what happens when you try to run from the past. It just doesn’t catch up, it overtakes … blotting out the future.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

Past

“Steve Jobs: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

Walter Isaacson book Steve Jobs

Source: Steve Jobs

Way

“The future rose up ahead of her, a succession of empty days, each more daunting and unknowable than the one before her.”

David Nicholls book One Day

Source: One Day

Success

“You have to open up to the world and learn optimism… Contentment with the past, happiness with the present, and hope for the future. Learned optimisim.”

Jennifer Crusie (1949) American writer

Source: Agnes and the Hitman

Happiness, World, Hope, Optimism

“I was heading off to my new world. But I was taking a part of my past, and the future, along with me for the ride.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

World, Past, Parting

“All fear comes from trying to see the future, Biff. If you know what is coming, you aren't afraid.”

Christopher Moore book Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Source: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Fear

“The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Hope, Hope

“Children, Never look Back!" and this meant that we must never allow the future to be weighed down by memory. for children have no past, and that is the whole secret of the magical innocence of their smiles.”

Milan Kundera book The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Source: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Children, Secret, Smile, Memory

“Story is the umbilical cord that connects us to the past, present, and future. Family. Story is a relationship between the teller and the listener, a responsibility…. Story is an affirmation of our ties to one another.”

Terry Tempest Williams (1955) American writer

Source: Pieces of White Shell

Family, Past

“We cannot know the future. All we can do is face it bravely. We should take heed of those we love and respect. But in the end, we make every decision alone.”

Juliet Marillier book Seer of Sevenwaters

Source: Seer of Sevenwaters

Love, Decision

“I'm Kakashi Hatake. Things I like and things I hate… I don't feel like telling you that. My dreams for the future… never really thought about it. As for my hobbies… I have lots of hobbies.”

Masashi Kishimoto book Naruto

Hate, Dreams, Feeling

“Awareness requires living in the here and now, and not in the elsewhere, the past or the future.”

Eric Berne book Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships

Source: Games People Play

Past

“No one can lose either the past or the future - how could anyone be deprived of what he does not possess?… It is only the present moment of which either stands to be deprived: and if this is all he has, he cannot lose what he does not have.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Past

“They had no past. They had no future. They just were.”

Paullina Simons book The Bronze Horseman

Source: The Bronze Horseman

Past

“History is no more fixed and dead than the future. The past is no further away than the last breath you took.”

Robin Hobb (1952) American fiction writer (pseudonym)

History, Past, Dead

“You know most people live ninety per cent in the past, seven per cent in the present, and that only leaves them three per cent for the future.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent

People, Past

“The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

“Beyond the edge of the world there’s a space where emptiness and substance neatly overlap, where past and future form a continuous, endless loop. And, hovering about, there are signs no one has ever read, chords no one has ever heard.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

World, Reading, Past

“Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

People, Knowledge

“And I suddenly think, as I look across the table at him, that these are the days as they will be. This is the future as we see it. The swerve and the static. The confidence and the doubt.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Confidence, Thinking

“Resistance to change is proportional to how much the future might be altered by any given act.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

Change

“Do not dwell on past failures or it will ruin your future.”

Audrey Phillips

Failure, Past

“I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.”

George Eliot book The Mill on the Floss

Source: The Mill on the Floss

Past

“Just start off with the same goals in mind. If you have the same values, same goals then you'll be on track for the same future.”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

“Our task is to educate their (our students) whole being so they can face the future. We may not see the future, but they will and our job is to help them make something of it.”

Ken Robinson (1950) UK writer

Source: The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

Education, Help

“Only a fool walks into the future backwards.”

Terry Goodkind book Stone of Tears

Source: Stone of Tears

Fools

“The heart may freeze, or it can burn. The pain will ease and I can learn. There is no future, there is no past. I live this moment as, my last.”

Jonathan Larson (1960–1996) American composer and playwright

Source: Rent: The Complete Book and Lyrics of the Broadway Musical

Pain, Learning, Past, Heart

“ice contains no future, just the past, sealed away. As if they're alive, everything in the world is sealed up inside, clear and distinct. Ice can preserve all kinds of things that way- cleanly, clearly. That's the essence of ice, the role it plays.”

Haruki Murakami book Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Source: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

World, Way, Past

“Society just doesn't care about young people anymore, even if we are the future.”

Erin Gruwell book The Freedom Writers Diary

Source: The Freedom Writers Diary

People

“The future ain't what it used to be.”

Yogi Berra (1925–2015) American baseball player, manager, coach

When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It!: Inspiration and Wisdom from One of Baseball's Greatest Heroes, Hyperion, 2002, ISBN 0786867752, p. 159.
Paul Valery (1937): "The future, like everything else, is no longer quite what it used to be.". Translated in English in 1948 in Our Destiny and Literature.
Disputed, Misattributed

“A youth is to be regarded with respect. How do we know that his future will not be equal to our present?”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Life and Wisdom of Confucius

Youth

“You can't possibly conduct a proper affair without a lot of deliberating, scheming, speculating, and conniving. It's a delicate balance where the excitement must equal the guilt and sex must be as bright as the future you gamble.”

John Dufresne (1948) Novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, playwright

Source: Love Warps the Mind a Little

Sex