“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
Alan Kay (1971) at a 1971 meeting of PARC http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/09/27/invent-the-future/
Similar remarks are attributed to Peter Drucker and Dandridge M. Cole.
Cf. Dennis Gabor, Inventing the Future (1963): "The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented."
Nigel Calder reviewed Gabor's book and wrote, "we cannot predict the future, but we can invent it..."
1970s
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Alan Kay 25
computer scientist 1940Related quotes
“The best way to predict your future is to create it.”
“The best way to predict your future is to create it”
Source: Inventing the Future (1963), p. 161
Chamberlin's @DarkOptimism account (2021) https://twitter.com/DarkOptimism/status/1435951949258661898
“Unforeseen technological inventions can completely upset the most careful predictions.”
The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)
“It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future”
The earliest citations of this proverb, from the mid-twentieth century, refer to it as Danish in origin. See http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/10/20/no-predict/
Disputed, Misattributed
“Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.”
As quoted in Teaching and Learning Elementary Social Studies (1970) by Arthur K. Ellis, p. 431
The above quote is also attributed to various humourists and the Danish poet Piet Hein: "det er svært at spå – især om fremtiden"
It is also attributed to Danish cartoonist Storm P (Robert Storm Petersen).
Disputed
Variant: It's hard to make predictions, especially about the future.