A change of fortune hurts a wise man no more than a change of the moon.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1732Quotes
The future is no more uncertain than the present.
—Walt Whitman, 1856Fate leads the willing and drags along those who hang back.
—Cleanthes, c. 250 BCNot 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 future...something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.
—C.S. Lewis, 1941Little folks become their little fate.
—Horace, c. 20 BCI’ve seen the future, brother; it is murder.
—Leonard Cohen, 1992I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1816The future, like everything else, is no longer quite what it used to be.
—Paul Valéry, 1931Every man takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world.
—Arthur Schopenhauer, 1851Men are able to assist fortune but not to thwart her. They can weave her designs, but they cannot destroy them.
—Niccolò Machiavelli, 1531As 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, 1859I don’t try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.
—Ray Bradbury, 1992