All progress is based upon a universal, innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.

Men are able to assist fortune but not to thwart her. They can weave her designs, but they cannot destroy them.

Fate leads the willing and drags along those who hang back.

The world began without man, and it will end without him.

Not 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.

Every man takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world.

People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.

A change of fortune hurts a wise man no more than a change of the moon.

Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

As natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection.

My interest is in the future, because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.

The less a man knows about the past and the present, the more insecure must prove to be his judgment of the future.

I don’t try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.