The future comes like an unwelcome guest.
—Edmund Gosse, 1873Quotes
Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.
—Albert Camus, 1951Not a change for the better in our human housekeeping has ever taken place that wise and good men have not opposed it—have not prophesied that the world would wake up to find its throat cut in consequence.
—James Russell Lowell, 1884The world began without man, and it will end without him.
—Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1955The future is no more uncertain than the present.
—Walt Whitman, 1856All progress is based upon a universal, innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
—Samuel Butler, c. 1890The future, like everything else, is no longer quite what it used to be.
—Paul Valéry, 1931I don’t try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.
—Ray Bradbury, 1992Tomorrow never comes, man. It’s all the same fucking day.
—Janis Joplin, 1972Fate leads the willing and drags along those who hang back.
—Cleanthes, c. 250 BCPeople will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.
—Edmund Burke, 1790My interest is in the future, because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.
—Charles F. Kettering, 1946The world is dying of machinery; that is the great disease, that is the plague that will sweep away and destroy civilization; man will have to rise against it sooner or later.
—George Moore, 1888