The future, like everything else, is no longer quite what it used to be.

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.

The future comes like an unwelcome guest.

We must confess that at present the rich predominate, but the future will be for the virtuous and ingenious.

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

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

The future is no more uncertain than the present.

The 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.

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

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

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

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

Often the prudent, far from making their destinies, succumb to them; it is destiny which makes them prudent.