The habit of looking to the future and thinking that the whole meaning of the present lies in what it will bring forth is a pernicious one. There can be no value in the whole unless there is value in the parts.
BERTRAND RUSSELL, Conquest of Happiness
The future is not an inheritance, it is an opportunity and an obligation.
There is no present or future, only the past, happening over and over again, now.
EUGENE O'NEILL, A Moon for the Misbegotten
Always in motion is the future.
YODA, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Future, n. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.
AMBROSE BIERCE, The Devil's Dictionary
He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.
GEORGE ORWELL, Nineteen Eighty-Four
You can never plan the future by the past.
EDMUND BURKE, letter to a Member of the National Assembly
Rational behavior ... depends upon a ceaseless flow of data from the environment. It depends upon the power of the individual to predict, with at least a fair success, the outcome of his own actions. To do this, he must be able to predict how the environment will respond to his acts. Sanity, itself, thus hinges on man's ability to predict his immediate, personal future on the basis of information fed him by the environment.
ALVIN TOFFLER, Future Shock
People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.
GEORGE ORWELL, Partisan Review, Winter 1945
The future ain't what it used to be.
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