Men are able to assist fortune but not to thwart her. They can weave her designs, but they cannot destroy them.
—Niccolò Machiavelli, 1531Quotes
People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.
—Edmund Burke, 1790God seems to have left the receiver off the hook, and time is running out.
—Arthur Koestler, 1967All progress is based upon a universal, innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
—Samuel Butler, c. 1890Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
—Oscar Wilde, 1893As natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection.
—Charles Darwin, 1859The future is no more uncertain than the present.
—Walt Whitman, 1856The less a man knows about the past and the present, the more insecure must prove to be his judgment of the future.
—Sigmund Freud, 1927A change of fortune hurts a wise man no more than a change of the moon.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1732The world began without man, and it will end without him.
—Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1955Little folks become their little fate.
—Horace, c. 20 BCThe future...something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.
—C.S. Lewis, 1941Tomorrow never comes, man. It’s all the same fucking day.
—Janis Joplin, 1972