Quotes about the future
page 26

Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis photo
Nicholas Negroponte photo
Max Horkheimer photo
Arun Shourie photo
Charles Taze Russell photo

“Thus we see clearly that the Papacy has substituted a false or sham sacrifice, in the place of the one everlasting, complete and never-to-be-repeated sacrifice of Calvary, made once for all time. Thus it was that Papacy took away from Christ's work the merit of being rightly esteemed the Continual Sacrifice, by substituting in its stead a fraud, made by its own priests. It is needless here to detail the reason why Papacy denies and sets aside the true Continual Sacrifice, and substitutes the "abomination," the Mass, in its stead; for most of our readers know that this doctrine that the priest makes in the Mass a sacrifice for sins, without which they cannot be canceled, or their penalties escaped, is at the very foundation of all the various schemes of the Church of Rome for wringing money from the people, for all her extravagancies and luxuries. "Absolutions", "indulgences", and all the various presumed benefits, favors, privileges and immunities, for either the present or the future life, for either the living or the dead, are based upon this blasphemous doctrine of the Mass, the fundamental doctrine of the apostasy. It is by virtue of the power and authority which the sacrifice of the Mass imposes upon the priests, that their other blasphemous claims, to have and exercise the various prerogatives which belong to Christ only, are countenanced by the people.”

Charles Taze Russell (1852–1916) Founder of the Bible Student Movement

Source: Milennial Dawn, Vol. III: Thy Kingdom Come (1891), p. 102.

PZ Myers photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
John R. Commons photo
George Moore (novelist) photo
Stanisław Lem photo
Lysander Spooner photo
Jane Roberts photo
Talal Abu-Ghazaleh photo
Alex Salmond photo

“I see not a step before me as I tread on another year;
But I ’ve left the Past in God’s keeping,—the Future
His mercy shall clear;
And what looks dark in the distance may brighten as I draw near.”

Mary Gardiner Brainard (1837–1905) American poet

Not knowing, published in The Congregationalist, March 1869, and set to music as a hymn by Philip Paul Bliss in the 1870s. Thomas Corts, Glimpses of Christian History Presents More Stories: Blessed Bliss http://chi.gospelcom.net/lives_events/more/bliss.shtml, 2007.

Saddam Hussein photo

“Hussein stated it is not only important what people say or think about him now but what they think in the future, 500 or 1000 years from now. The most important thing, however, is what God thinks. If God believes something, He will convince the people to agree. If God does not agree, it does not matter what the people think.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

Interview by FBI Senior Special Agent George L. Piro (7 February 2004); National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 279 http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB279/index.htm.
Attributed

Hugh Blair photo

“Dissimulation in youth is the forerunner of perfidy in old age; its first appearance is the fatal omen of growing depravity and future shame.”

Hugh Blair (1718–1800) British philosopher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 242.

Jorge Luis Borges photo

“Every man should be capable of all ideas and I understand that in the future this will be the case.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

"Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote"
The Garden of Forking Paths (1942)

Will Eisner photo
Gautama Buddha photo

“… how can I permit my disciples, Mahāmati, to eat food consisting of flesh and blood, which is gratifying to the unwise but is abhorred by the wise, which brings many evils and keeps away many merits; and which was not offered to the Rishis and is altogether unsuitable?
Now, Mahāmati, the food I have permitted [my disciples to take] is gratifying to all wise people but is avoided by the unwise; it is productive of many merits, it keeps away many evils; and it has been prescribed by the ancient Rishis. It comprises rice, barley, wheat, kidney beans, beans, lentils, etc., clarified butter, oil, honey, molasses, treacle, sugar cane, coarse sugar, etc.; food prepared with these is proper food. Mahāmati, there may be some irrational people in the future who will discriminate and establish new rules of moral discipline, and who, under the influence of the habit-energy belonging to the carnivorous races, will greedily desire the taste [of meat]: it is not for these people that the above food is prescribed. Mahāmati, this is the food I urge for the Bodhisattva-Mahāsattvas who have made offerings to the previous Buddhas, who have planted roots of goodness, who are possessed of faith, devoid of discrimination, who are all men and women belonging to the Śākya family, who are sons and daughters of good family, who have no attachment to body, life, and property, who do not covet delicacies, are not at all greedy, who being compassionate desire to embrace all living beings as their own person, and who regard all beings with affection as if they were an only child.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

Mahayana, Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, Chapter Eight. On Meat-eating

Sri Aurobindo photo
George William Curtis photo
Martin Amis photo
W. Somerset Maugham photo
Maimónides photo
John Gray photo
Hermann Hesse photo
Joseph Nye photo

“The territorial state has not always existed in the past, so it need not necessarily exist in the future.”

Joseph Nye (1937) American political scientist

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 9, A New World Order?, p. 262.

Honoré de Balzac photo

“A girl's coquetry is of the simplest, she thinks that all is said when the veil is laid aside; a woman's coquetry is endless, she shrouds herself in veil after veil, she satisfies every demand of man's vanity, the novice responds but to one.
And there are terrors, fears, and hesitations — trouble and storm in the love of a woman of thirty years, never to be found in a young girl's love. At thirty years a woman asks her lover to give her back the esteem she has forfeited for his sake; she lives only for him, her thoughts are full of his future, he must have a great career, she bids him make it glorious; she can obey, entreat, command, humble herself, or rise in pride; times without number she brings comfort when a young girl can only make moan.”

La jeune fille n'a qu'une coquetterie, et croit avoir tout dit quand elle a quitté son vêtement; mais la femme en a d'innombrables et se cache sous mille voiles; enfin elle caresse toutes les vanités, et la novice n'en flatte qu'une. Il s'émeut d'ailleurs des indécisions, des terreurs, des craintes, des troubles et des orages chez la femme de trente ans, qui ne se rencontrent jamais dans l'amour d'une jeune fille.Arrivée à cet âge, la femme demande à un jeune homme de lui restituer l'estime qu'elle lui a sacrifiée; elle ne vit que pour lui, s'occupe de son avenir, lui veut une belle vie, la lui ordonne glorieuse; elle obéit, elle prie et commande, s'abaisse et s'élève, et sait consoler en mille occasions, où la jeune fille ne sait que gémir.
Source: A Woman of Thirty (1842), Ch. III: At Thirty Years.

Laura Bush photo

“Every child in American should have access to a well-stocked school library. … An investment in libraries is an investment in our children's future.”

Laura Bush (1946) First Lady of the United States from 2001 to 2009

As quoted in Biography Today : Profiles of People of Interest to Young Readers, Vol. 12, Issue 2 : Laura Bush by Joanne Mattern (2003), p. 34

“Some one wrote to me upon the publication of my book two years ago: “But you live in England! Poor man: then you are a preacher in the desert!” So I am. But I owe something to my desert. The desert is an excellent place for anybody who can make use of it, as biblical and post-biblical experience proves. Without my desert I should not have written my book. Without coming to England I should have become a modern creature, going in for money and motor-cars. For I was born with a fatal inclination for such lighter and brighter kind of things. I was born under a lucky star, so to say: I was born with a warm heart and a happy disposition; I was born to play a good figure in one of those delightful fêtes champêtres of Watteau, Lancret, and Boucher, with a nice little shepherdess on my arm, listening to the sweet music of Rossini and drinking the inspiring “Capri bianco” or “Verona soave” of that beautiful country Italy. But the sky over here is not blue—nor grows there any wine in England—and no Rossini ever lived here; and towards the native shepherdesses I adopted the ways of the Christian towards his beautiful ideals: I admired them intensely but kept myself afar. So there was nothing to console your thirsty and disenchanted traveller in the British Sahara. In the depths of his despair, there was sent to him, as to the traveller in the desert, an enchanting vision, a beautiful fata Morgana rising on the horizon of the future, a fertile and promising Canaan of a new creed that had arisen in Germany (there too as a revulsion against the desert): the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.
So I owe something to the desert. Had I not wandered there so long, I could never have fervently wished to escape nor finally succeeded in coming out of it.”

Oscar Levy (1867–1946) German physician and writer

Preface, pp. xii-xiii.
The Revival of Aristocracy (1906)

“The time has come for me to forget my past and live a future that even I am unaware of.”

Protima Bedi (1948–1998) Indian model and dancer

When she left the Nitygram village quoted in "Bowing Out".

Prince photo
Wilhelm Reich photo
John Archibald Wheeler photo
Horst Ludwig Störmer photo

“It’s the boundaries where the excitement is and where we will be in the future.”

Horst Ludwig Störmer (1949) German physicist

Small Wonders – The World of Nanoscience. Honeywell-Nobel Laureate Lecture Series at Czech Technical University, Prague (October 19, 2006), http://www.honeywellscience.com/nobel-laureates/physics/horst-stormer

William Gibson photo

“The past is past, the future unformed. There is only the moment, and that is where he prefers to be.”

Source: All Tomorrow's Parties‎ (2003), Ch. 4 : Formal Absences of Precious Things, p. 21

Vincent Van Gogh photo

“About staying in the south, even if it's more expensive — Look, we love Japanese painting, we've experienced its influence — all the Impressionists have that in common — and we wouldn't go to Japan, in other words, to what is the equivalent of Japan, the south? So I believe that the future of the new art still lies in the south after all. But it's bad policy to live there alone when two or three could help each other to live on little.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

In a letter to brother Theo, from Arles, c. 5 June 1888, in 'Van Gogh's Letters', letter 620 http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let620/letter.html, Van Goghmuseum
Vincent was busy, trying to convince a. o. Paul Gauguin to come to Arles, and to settle there
1880s, 1888

Agatha Christie photo
John Green photo
Rab Butler photo

“What struck me at the League was the prestige in which our Government and our Prime Minister are held. What has struck hon. Members who have listened to this Debate is the fact that public opinion in the dictator countries has conceived a profound admiration for our Prime Minister and our country. Our country, therefore, is the country which is in a priceless position for securing the future of peace…It seems to me that we have two choices either to settle our differences with Germany by consultation, or to face the inevitability of a clash between the two systems of democracy and dictatorship. In considering this, I must emphatically give my opinion as one of the younger generation. War settles nothing, and I see no alternative to the policy upon which the Prime Minister has so courageously set himself—the construction of peace, with the aid which I have described. There is no other country which can achieve this, and I ask hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite sincerely to believe that in our efforts to understand, to consult with and, if possible, to get friendship with Germany, we do not abandon by one jot or tittle the democratic beliefs which are the very core of our whole being and system. In conclusion, I must gratify the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield by quoting Shakespeare. The right hon. Gentleman will remember the little poem "Under the Greenwood Tree"—"Here shall he see" "No enemy," "But winter and rough weather."”

Rab Butler (1902–1982) British politician

We have the winter before us, and we have a great deal of political rough weather, but in that rough weather, do not let us forget the joint idea of peace which animates us all.
Speech on the Munich Agreement http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1938/oct/05/policy-of-his-majestys-government (5 October 1938).

H. G. Wells photo
Desmond Tutu photo

“Without forgiveness there can be no future for a relationship between individuals or within and between nations.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

As quoted in "Truth and reconciliation" at BBC Focus on Africa (January-March 2000)

Peter F. Drucker photo
Anton Chekhov photo
José Mourinho photo
Sri Aurobindo photo

“The ascent of man into heaven is not the key, but rather his ascent here into the spirit and the descent also of the Spirit into his normal humanity and the transformation of this earthly nature. For that and not some post mortem salvation is the real new birth for which humanity waits as the crowning movement of its long obscure and painful course…. Therefore the individuals who will most help the future of humanity in the new age will be those who will recognise a spiritual evolution as the destiny and therefore the great need of the human being…. They will especially not make the mistake of thinking that this change can be effected by machinery and outward institutions; they will know and never forget that it has to be lived out by each man inwardly or it can never be made a reality for the kind…. Failures must be originally numerous in everything great and difficult, but the time comes when the experience of past failures can be profitably used and the gate that so long resisted opens. In this as in all great human aspirations and endeavours, an a priori declaration of impossibility is a sign of ignorance and weakness, and the motto of the aspirant's endeavour must be the solvitur ambulando of the discoverer. For by the doing the difficulty will be solved. A true beginning has to be made; the rest is a work for Time in its sudden achievements or its long patient labour….”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

July, 1918
India's Rebirth

“If you see something different for yourself in the future, you have to do something different for yourself in the present.”

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 110

Edmund White photo
Clement Attlee photo

“My noble friend Lord Morrison of Lambeth rather suggested that it was a really good Socialist policy to join up with these countries. I do not think that comes into it very much. They are not Socialist countries, and the object, so far as I can see, is to set up an organisation with a tariff against the rest of the world within which there shall be the freest possible competition between, capitalist interests. That might be a kind of common ideal. I daresay that is why it is supported by the Liberal Party. It is not a very good picture for the future…I believe in a planned economy. So far as I can see, we are to a large extent losing our power to plan as we want and submitting not to a Council of Ministers but a collection of international civil servants, able and honest, no doubt, but not necessarily having the best future of this country at heart…I think we are parting, to some extent at all events, with our powers to plan our own country in the way we desire. I quite agree that that plan should fit in, as far as it can, with a world plan. That is a very different thing from submitting our plans to be planned by a body of international civil servants, no doubt excellent men. I may be merely insular, but I have no prejudice in a Britain planned for the British by the British. Therefore, as at present advised, I am quite unconvinced either that it is necessary or that it is even desirable that we should go into the Common Market.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1962/aug/02/britain-and-the-common-market in the House of Lords on the British application to join the Common Market (2 August 1962).
Later life

“Cold on Canadian hills or Minden’s plain,
Perhaps that parent mourned her soldier slain;
Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew,
The big drops mingling with the milk he drew
Gave the sad presage of his future years,—
The child of misery, baptized in tears.”

The Country Justice, Part i, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). This allusion to the dead soldier and his widow on the field of battle was made the subject of a print by Bunbury, under which were engraved the pathos-laden lines of Langhorne. Sir Walter Scott mentioned that the only time he saw Burns this picture was in the room. Burns shed tears over it; and Scott, then a lad of fifteen, was the only person present who could tell him where the lines were to be found. In Lockhart, Life of Scott, vol. i. chap. iv.

Thich Nhat Hanh photo

“The present moment
contains past and future.
The secret of transformation,
is in the way we handle this very moment.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Understanding Our Mind (2006) Parallax Press ISBN 978-81-7223-796-7

Juho Kusti Paasikivi photo
Ba Jin photo

“Only by not forgetting the past can we be the master of the future.”

Ba Jin (1904–2005) Chinese novelist

As quoted "Literary witness to century of turmoil" in China Daily (24 November 2003)

Henry R. Towne photo
Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar photo
Ulysses S. Grant photo
Elie Wiesel photo

“Just as man cannot live without dreams, he cannot live without hope. If dreams reflect the past, hope summons the future.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

Hope, Despair, and Memory (1986)

Caitlin Upton photo

“Aimee Teegarden: Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can't locate the U. S. on a world map. Why do you think this is?
Caitlin Upton: I personally believe that U. S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don't have maps and, uh, I believe that our education, like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should—our education over here in the U. S. should help the U. S., uh, or, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq, and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future, for our children.”

Caitlin Upton (1989) American model

2007 Miss Teen USA Pageant, 24 August 2007<sup> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww</sup>
The Yale Book of Quotations designated the response the second most memorable quote of 2007<sup> http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/12/19/us-quotes-odd-idUSN1959512020071219</sup>
Upton won the 2007 World Stupidity Award for the Stupidest Statement of the Year<sup> https://web.archive.org/web/20090106013000/http://www.stupidityawards.com/Stupidest_Statement_of_the_Year.html</sup>

Swami Vivekananda photo
Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery photo
W. Edwards Deming photo
Rick Perry photo

“Audie Murphy remains a shining example for anyone who believes in the importance of service, for generations now and into the future.”

Rick Perry (1950) 14th and current United States Secretary of Energy

Upon awarding the Texas Legislative Medal of Honor posthumously to Audie Murphy, the most highly decorated American soldier of World War II. (29 October 2013)
2013

John Gray photo
Ted Cruz photo
Benjamin N. Cardozo photo
Orson Scott Card photo
Charles de Gaulle photo

“The future does not belong to men…”

Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970) eighteenth President of the French Republic

L'avenir n'appartient pas aux hommes...
Speech, December 1967
Fifth Republic and other post-WW2

Jose Peralta photo
R. A. Lafferty photo

“Paul, there is something very slack about a future that will take a biting satire for a vapid dream.”

The character of Thomas More on the future reception of his Utopia, in Ch. 2
Past Master (1968)

Charles Stross photo
J. C. R. Licklider photo
Nicholas Roerich photo

“No name will provoke so many attacks as that of Maitreya, for it is bound up with the future. Nothing provokes so much fear and irritation in people as thinking about the future.”

Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947) Russian painter, writer, archaeologist, theosophist, enlightener, philosopher

§ 336
Agni Yoga (1929)

“No event, no matter how preposterous, will fail to find itself indispensable to some future happenstance.”

Tony Vigorito (1950) American writer

Just a Couple of Days (2001, 2007)

Démosthenés photo

“No man can tell what the future may bring forth, and small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.”

Démosthenés (-384–-322 BC) ancient greek statesman and orator

Ad Leptinum 162, as quoted in Dictionary of Quotations (Classical) (1897) by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 511

Steve Keen photo

“The belief that a capitalist economy is inherently stabilising is also one for which inhabitants of market economies may pay dearly in the future.”

Steve Keen (1953) Australian economist

Source: Debunking Economics - The Naked Emperor Of The Social Sciences (2001), Chapter 9, The Sum Of The Parts, p. 213

“When I graduated from high school, I hoped that one day gay Americans would be able to get married. And now here I am 45 years later officiating same-sex marriages—how can I not be optimistic that the future is bright?”

Daayiee Abdullah (1954) Homosexual Muslim activist

First Gay ‘Imam’ in USA Says ‘Quran Doesn’t Call for Punishment of Homosexuals’ http://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2015/05/159043/first-gay-imam-in-usa-says-quran-doesnt-call-for-punishment-of-homosexuals/ (22 May 2015), Morocco World News.

Farah Pahlavi photo

“I try to forget about the bitter past as I [also] recommend for my fellow countrymen. I do not live in the past, I live in the present, always hoping for a brighter future. This is my message to all my countrymen.”

Farah Pahlavi (1938) Empress of Iran

Interview: Farah Pahlavi Recalls 30 Years In Exile http://www.rferl.org/content/Interview_Farah_Pahlavi_Recalls_30_Years_In_Exile/2111354.html, Radio Free Europe, (July 27, 2010).
Interviews

Franklin D. Roosevelt photo
Joseph E. Stiglitz photo
Vannevar Bush photo
Fred Polak photo
Saul D. Alinsky photo
Henry George photo
James Anthony Froude photo
John F. Kennedy photo
Bill Nye photo

“We want to get young people excited about inventing so they'll be future inventors, and change the world.”

Bill Nye (1955) American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, writer, scientist and former mechanical engineer

[9, NewsBank, Click Life - Where kids get plugged in, New York Daily News, July 2, 2000, Alissa MacMillan]