I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1816Quotes
People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.
—Edmund Burke, 1790A change of fortune hurts a wise man no more than a change of the moon.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1732The less a man knows about the past and the present, the more insecure must prove to be his judgment of the future.
—Sigmund Freud, 1927Fate leads the willing and drags along those who hang back.
—Cleanthes, c. 250 BCTomorrow never comes, man. It’s all the same fucking day.
—Janis Joplin, 1972I don’t try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.
—Ray Bradbury, 1992The world began without man, and it will end without him.
—Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1955Every man takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world.
—Arthur Schopenhauer, 1851My interest is in the future, because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.
—Charles F. Kettering, 1946The future is no more uncertain than the present.
—Walt Whitman, 1856I’ve seen the future, brother; it is murder.
—Leonard Cohen, 1992The future, like everything else, is no longer quite what it used to be.
—Paul Valéry, 1931