Future - christiansquoting.org.uk

Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, that amateurs built the Ark. Professionals built the Titanic

The road of life can only reveal itself as it is traveled; each turn in the road reveals a surprise. Man's future is hidden.

No one can predict to what heights you can soar.Even you will not know until you spread your wings.

Duniya mace da ciki ce - The world is a pregnant women, i.e. no-one knows the future.-- Hausa proverb, Nigeria.

God will not suffer man to have a knowledge of things to come; for if he had prescience of his prosperity, he would be careless; and if understanding of his adversity, he would be despairing and senseless.-- Augustine

The future ain't what it used to be...Lawrence Peter (Yogi) Berra (b. 1925)

Future, n. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured - Ambrose Bierce, The Devils Dictionary

Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.-- Neils Bohr

I look to the future because that's where I'm going to spend the rest of my life.--George Burns (1896-1996) At age 87

But Mousie, thou art no thy lane
In proving foresight may be vain
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain
For promis'd joy!
~Robert Burns, To a Mouse (1785)

The best of prophets of the future is the past. --George Noel Gordon [Lord Byron] (1788-1824]_Journal_, [January 28, 1821]

The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games to which it is most attached is called, `` Keep tomorrow dark'', and which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) `` Cheat the Prophet''. The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. Then they go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun. G. K. Chesterton

Big Brother is watching you. --George Orwell [Eric Blair] (1903-1950) _Nineteen Eighty-Four_ [1949], Chapter 1, Section I

The three slogans of the party: War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength. --George Orwell [Eric Blair] (1903-1950)_Nineteen Eighty-Four_ [1949], Chapter 1, Section I

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--forever. --George Orwell [Eric Blair] (1903-1950) _Nineteen Eighty-Four_ [1949], Chapter 3, Section III

THE truth is that all feeble spirits naturally live in the future, because it is featureless; it is a soft job; you can make it what you like. The next age is blank, and I can paint it freshly with my favourite colour. It requires real courage to face the past, because the past is full of facts which cannot be got over; of men certainly wiser than we, and of things done which we could not do. I know I cannot write a poem as good as 'Lycidas.' But it is always easy to say that the particular sort of poetry I can write will be the poetry of the future.-- G K Chesterton, 'George Bernard Shaw.'

You can not focus on the future when your vision is blurred by regret. Decker, Alex

God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road. - Isak Dinesen (1885-1962)

I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.-- George Eliot

It is never safe to look into the future with eyes of fear. - E. H. Harriman

A fake fortuneteller can be tolerated. But an authentic soothsayer should be shot on sight. Cassandra did not get half the kicking around she deserved. One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.-- Robert Heinlein

No one--not even the most brilliant scientist alive today--really knows where science is taking us. We are aboard a a train which is gathering speed, racing down a track on which there are an unknown number of switches leading to unknown destinations. No single scientist is in the engine cab and there may be demons at the switch. Most of society is in the caboose looking backward.- Ralph Lapp, Quoted in the Dust of Death by Os Guiness 1973

We're not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be. C.S. Lewis

When it comes to the future, there are three kinds of people: those who let it happen, those who make it happen, and those who wonder what happened. - John M. Richardson, Jr

Great talk among people how some of the Fanatiques do say that the end of the world is at hand, and that next Tuesday is to be the day. Against which, whenever it shall be, good God fit us all! --Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) _Diary_ [November 25, 1662]

If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow and which will not,
Speak then to me.-- William Shakespeare, _Macbeth_

The joy I felt as the prospect before me of being the instrument destined to take away from the world one of its greatest calamities [smallpox] was so excessive that I found myself in a kind of reverie. .Edward Jenner (1749-1823) In "Isaac Asimov's Book of Science and Nature Quotations," ed. Jason Shulman & Isaac Asimov, 1988.

I hope that some day the practice of producing cowpox in human beings will spread over the world -- when that day comes, there will be no more smallpox.- Edward Jenner (1749-1823)

The sun of Great Britain will set whenever she acknowledges the independence of America......the independence of America would end in the ruin of England.
Lord Shelburne in the House of Lords 1782

A future separation of the American tongue from the English was necessary and unavoidable.... Numerous local causes, such as a new country, new associations of people, new combinations of ideas in arts and sciences, and some intercourse with tribes wholly unknown in Europe, will introduce new words into the American tongue. These causes will produce, in a course of time, a language in North America as different from the future language of England as the modern Dutch, Danish and Swedish are from the German, or from one another. ~Noah Webster, Dissertations on the English Language (1789)

What, sir, you would make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her decks? I pray you excuse me. I have no time to listen to such nonsense. - - Napoleon to Robert Fulton

There is a young madman proposing to light the streets of London-with what do you suppose-with smoke!
Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) [On a proposal to light cities with gaslight.]

Shakespeare's name, you may depend on it, stands absolutely too -- high and will go down.
Lord Byron, letter to James Hogg, March 1814.

If we were to prophesy that in the year 1930 a population of fifty millions, better fed, clad, and lodged than the English of our time, will cover these islands, that Sussex and Huntingdonshire will be wealthier than the wealthiest parts of the West Riding of Yorkshire now are, that cultivation, rich as that of a flower-garden, will be carried up to the very tops of Ben Nevis and Helvellyn, that machines constructed on principles yet undiscovered, will be in every house, that there will be no highways but railroads, no travelling but by steam, that our debt, vast as it seems to us, will appear to our great-grandchildren a trifling incumbrance, which might easily be paid off in a year or two, many people would think us insane. --T.B. Macaulay, _Southey's Colloquies on Society_, 1830

The abolishment of pain in surgery is a chimera. It is absurd to go on seeking it.... Knife and pain are two words in surgery that must forever be associated in the consciousness of the patient. To this compulsory combination we shall have to adjust ourselves. --Dr Alfred Velpeau, professor at the Paris Faculty of Medicine, 1839.

Men might as well project a voyage to the Moon as attempt to employ steam navigation against the stormy North Atlantic Ocean.
Dr. Dionysus Lardner (1793-1859), Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy at University College, London.

Rail travel at high speeds above 20 miles per hour is not possible, because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia. Dr. Dionysys Lardner (1793 - 1859).

1858 has not, indeed, been marked by any of those discoveries which at once revolutionize, so to speak, the department of science in which they occur.
Thomas Bell (1792-1880) President of the Linnean Society, speaking of the year in which Darwin read his papers on the origin of species to the society.in Robert Youngson, Scientific Blunders: A brief history of how wrong scientists can sometimes be, Robinson,1998

When Gladstone met Michael Faraday, he asked him whether his work on electricity would be of any use. "Yes, sir" remarked Faraday with prescience, "One day you will tax it." .- Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power, Harper Collins,1995, p176

Aerial flight is one of that class of problems with which men will never have to cope.
Simon Newcomb (1835-1909),the most influential American astronomer of his day.

I do not think that the wireless waves I have discovered will have any practical application.
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857-94), discoverer of radio wave propagation.

This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us. Western Union internal memo, 1876.

The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.
Sir William Preece, chief engineer of the British Post Office, 1876

An amazing invention - but who would ever want to use one?
US President Rutherford B. Hayes makes a call from Washington to Pennsylvania with Alexander Graham Bell's telephone, patented on 7 March 1876

Good enough for our transatlantic friends ... but unworthy of the attentions of practical or scientific men.
British Parliamentary Committee on Thomas Edison's electric lamp, patented in the USA on 27 January 1879.

Fooling around with alternating current is a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever. Thomas Edison

The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have already been discovered and these are now sofirmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is remote.
Albert Michelson (1852-1931) the American physicist whose experiment with Edward Morley (1838-1923) in 1887 changed the whole face of science and undermined the entire basis of classical physics, in Robert Youngson, Scientific Blunders: A brief history of how wrong scientists can sometimes be, Robinson,1998

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. Lord Kelvin,1895..

Radio has no future. -- Lord Kelvin, 1897, on Marconi's experiments.

I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning, or of the expectation of good results from any of the trials we hear of.'' Lord Kelvin (1824-1907), writing to Baden-Powell in 1896in Robert Youngson, Scientific Blunders: A brief history of how wrong scientists can sometimes be, Robinson,1998

`X-rays will prove to be a hoax. Lord Kelvin (1824-1907) in Robert Youngson, Scientific Blunders: A brief history of how wrong scientists can sometimes be, Robinson,1998

Trust you will avoid the gigantic mistake of alternating current.'' Lord Kelvin (1824-1907), writing to Niagara Falls Power Company.

War is a relic of babarism probably destined to become as obsolete as duelling.-- Lord Kelvin (1824-1907).

In answer to your inquiry, I consider that the chief dangers which confront the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and heaven without hell. --Gen. Booth

No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris ... [because] no known motor can run at the requisite speed for four days without stopping, -Orville Wright (1871-1948) US inventor, aviation pioneer

I must confess that my imagination, in spite even of spurring, refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocating its crew and floundering at sea.~ H. G. Wells, _Anticipations_, 1901

I do not believe the introduction of motor cars will ever affect the riding of horses; the prophecies that have been made are likely to be falsified as have those made when the railways were introduced. -- Mr Scott-Montagu, 1903

I cannot imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder . . . . Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that.
Capt. Edward J. Smith, 1906, later to command R. M. S. "Titanic".

I confess that in 1901 I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly for fifty years. Two years later we ourselves made flights. This demonstration of my impotence as a prophet gave me such a shock that ever since I have distrusted myself and avoided all predictions. --Wilbur Wright (1867-1912) _In a speech to the Aero Club of France_ [November 5, 1908]

Another popular fallacy is to suppose that flying machines could be used to drop dynamite on an enemy in time of war. -- William H. Pickering, 'Aeronautics,' 1908

The motor-car will help solve the congestion of traffic.--A. J. Balfour, c.1910

To affirm that the airplane is going to revolutionize the future is to be guilty of the wildest exaggeration ..._Scientific American Magazine_, 1910

Airplanes are interesting toys, but of no military value. -Ferdinand Foch (1851 &endash; 1929)

In Europe, the epoch of conquest is over, and save in the Balkans and perhaps on the fringes of the Austrian and Russian empires, it is as certain as anything in politics that the frontiers of our national states are finally drawn. My own belief is that there will be no more wars among the six Great Powers.~ H. N. Brailsford, 1913

There's talk of war. It will never happen. The Germans haven't the credit.~ The Governor of the Bank of England, 1914

Even if a submarine should work by a miracle, it will never be used. No country in this world would ever use such a vicious and petty form of warfare! - William Henderson, British admiral(1914)

Bullets have little stopping-power against the horse. -- General Douglas Haig, 1914.

The director of Military Aeronautics of France has decided to discontinue the purchase of monoplanes, their place to be filled entirely with bi-planes. This decision practically sounds the death knell of the monoplane as a military instrument." Scientific American (1915)

I can predict with absolute certainty that within another generation there will be another world war if the nations of the world do not concert the method by which to prevent it.~ Woodrow Wilson, 1919

There will not be any violations to speak of.- Supervising Revenue Agent Colonel Daniel Porter, 16 January 1920, as the US Congress passes the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages.

Nobody fears that a Japanese fleet could deal an unexpected blow on our Pacific possession...Radio makes surprise impossible." ~ Josephus Daniels, (1922) Former U.S. secretary of the navy, 19 years before Japan surprised the U.S. at Pearl Harbor.

Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of the atom is talking moonshine.
Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937),in Robert Youngson, Scientific Blunders: A brief history of how wrong scientists can sometimes be, Robinson,1998

To us who think in terms of practical use, the splitting of the atom means nothing.
Lord Richie Calder (1906-82) writing in 1932 in Robert Youngson, Scientific Blunders: A brief history of how wrong scientists can sometimes be, Robinson,1998

There is not the slightest indication that energy will ever be obtainable from the atom.
Albert Einstein (1879--1955) in Robert Youngson, Scientific Blunders: A brief history of how wrong scientists can sometimes be, Robinson,1998

There will not be any violations to speak of.
Supervising Revenue Agent Colonel Daniel Porter,16 January 1920, as the US Congress passes the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages.

In a generation, those who are now children will have lost their taste for alcohol. ~ John Fuller, Atlantis: America and the Future (1925)

Nobody fears that a Japanese fleet could deal an unexpected blow on our Pacific possession...Radio makes surprise impossible." ~ Josephus Daniels, (1922) Former U.S. secretary of the navy, 19 years before Japan surprised the U.S. at Pearl Harbor.

Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of the atom is talking moonshine.
Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937),in Robert Youngson, Scientific Blunders: A brief history of how wrong scientists can sometimes be, Robinson,1998

To us who think in terms of practical use, the splitting of the atom means nothing.
Lord Richie Calder (1906-82) writing in 1932 in Robert Youngson, Scientific Blunders: A brief history of how wrong scientists can sometimes be, Robinson,1998

There is not the slightest indication that energy will ever be obtainable from the atom.
Albert Einstein (1879--1955) in Robert Youngson, Scientific Blunders: A brief history of how wrong scientists can sometimes be, Robinson,1998

There will not be any violations to speak of.
Supervising Revenue Agent Colonel Daniel Porter,16 January 1920, as the US Congress passes the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages.

The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular? David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.

Go down to reception and get rid of a lunatic who's down there. He says he's got a machine for seeing by wireless! Watch him - he may have a razor on him. -- The editor of the Daily Express, 1925, dealing with John Logie Baird, inventor of a prototype television apparatus.

While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially I consider it an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time or dreaming. Lee De Forest, 1926

Can't act. Can't sing. Slightly bald. Can dance a little. A film company's verdict on Fred Astaire's 1928 screen test

A serious depression like that of 1920-21 is outside the range of probability. We are not facing protracted liquidation.
Harvard Economic Society 1929 November, in John Kenneth Galbraith The Great Crash 1929

It was not hard to persuade people that the market was sound; as always in such times they asked only that the dispiriting voices of doubt be muted and that there should be tolerably frequent expressions of confidence. Just a month before the crash, Irving Fisher was saying: "There may be a recession in stock prices, but not anything in the nature of a crash". John Kenneth Galbraith The Great Crash 1929

Television won't matter in your lifetime or mine. -- Rex Lambert, editor of the Radio Times, 1936.

I tell you, as one who has studied the whole situation, I don't think Hitler is a fool--he is not going to challenge the British Empire.
David Lloyd George, speech, 1937

I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper. - Gary Cooper (1901-61), on his decision to not take the Rhett Butler role in "Gone With the Wind"

Forget it. No Civil War picture ever made a nickel. MGM executive, advising against investing in Gone With The Wind

Very interesting, Whittle, my boy, but it will never work.
Professor of Aeronautical Engineering at Cambridge, shown Frank Whittle's plan for the jet engine

..the King had only to persevere in order to prevail. - Lord Beaverbrook's opinion , November 1936, in Lord Beaverbrook, The Abdication of King Edward VIII p.46 ( In a month the king had abdicated)

Your majesty's name will shine in history as the bravest and best beloved of the sovereigns who have worn the island crown. - Winston S Churchill, letter to Edward VIII on his accession to the throne, quoted in David Cannadine, In Churchill's Shadow p.63

Democracy as we conceive it in the US will not survive in Britain or France after the war - Joe Kennedy, London,1939, quoted in Boris Johnson, Lend Me Your Ears p302

Atomic energy might be as good as our present day explosives, but is unlikely to produce anything very much more dangerous
Winston Churchill (1874-1965), speaking in 1939.

No enemy bomber can reach the Ruhr. If one reaches the Ruhr, my name is not Goering. You may call me Meyer.
Herman Goering, German Air Force Minister, 1939

As far as sinking a ship with a bomb is concerned, you just can't do it. Rear Admiral Clark Woodward (1939)

Even considering the improvements possible...the gas turbine could hardly be considered a feasible application to airplanes because of the difficulties of complying with the stringent weight requirements."US National Academy Of Science (1940)

We won't be at war with Japan within forty-eight hours, within forty-eight days, within forty-eight years.
Wendell Wilkie, US Republican politician, speech, 7 December 1941; it was interrupted by news of Pearl Harbour.

Automobiles will start to decline almost as soon as the last shot is fired in World War II. The name of Igor Sikorsky will be as wellknown as Henry Ford's, for his helicopter will all but replace the horseless carriage as the new means of popular transportation. Instead of a car in every garage, there will be a helicopter.... These 'copters' will be so safe and will cost so little to produce that small models will be made for teenage youngsters. These tiny 'copters, when school lets out, will fill the sky as the bicycles of our youth filled the prewar roads. -- Harry Bruno, aviation publicist, 1943.

You'd better learn secretarial skills or else get married. Modelling agency, rejecting Marilyn Monroe in 1944

The atom bomb will never go off - and I speak as an expert in explosives. U.S. Admiral William Leahy in 1945

My Führer, I congratulate you! Roosevelt is dead! It is written in the stars that the second half of April will be a turning point for us.
Josef Goebbels: memo to Adolf Hitler on the death of the US President on 12 April 1945, By the end of the month both Hitler and Goebbels had committed suicide.

Television won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night. -Darryl F. Zanuck, head of 20th Century-Fox, 1946.

That rainbow song's no good. Take it out. MGM memo after first showing of The Wizard Of Oz

Computers in the future may weigh no more than one ton. Popular Mechanics,1949

You ought to go back to driving a truck. Concert manager, firing Elvis Presley in 1954.

A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make. - Associates of Mrs. Debbi Fields (1956 &endash; )

Space travel is utter bilge.
Dr. Richard van der Reit Wooley, Astronomer Royal, space advisor to the British government, 1956.(Sputnik orbited the earth the following year.)

I have travelled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year. The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957

Music is a fine hobby, but you'll never make a living at it. - John Lennon's aunt

Groups are out, four piece groups with guitars particularly are finished. The boys won't go, Mr. Epstein. We know these things. You have a good business in Liverpool. Stick to that. -- Dick Rowe, Decca Records, 1962 quoted in Brian Epstein's "A Cellarful Of Noise"

We must never forget that if the war in Vietnam is lost ... the right of free speech will be extinguished throughout the world. -- Richard M. Nixon 10 November 1965

Christianity will go. It will vanish and sink. I needn't argue about that. I'm right and will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now. I don't know which will go first - rock'n'roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.~John Lennon 4th March 1966

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines. -- Bertrand Russell

If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000. Paul Ehrlich in 1969

Abolition of capital punishment once and for all will help create a more civilized society. It will rebound to the advantage and honour of the nation.
Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, speech, House of Lords, 18 December 1969.

The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb, 1975

There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.
Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp.,1977

So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet."
Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and HP interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer.

If Ronald Reagan is re-elected, accidental nuclear war becomes a mathematical certainty.~ Dr. Helen Caldicott, 1984

The Wall will stand for a hundred years. Erich Honecker, 1988
The Wall was erected August 13, 1961 and came down November 9, 1989

There will be one million cases of AIDS in Britain by 1991.
World Health Organisation in a 1989 report. It over-estimated by 992,301 cases.

Anyone who says businessmen deal in facts, not fiction, has never read old five-year projections. Malcolm Forbes (1919 &endash; 1990)

What we may be witnessing is not just the end of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government. - Francis Fukuyama, The End of History? 1989

Judging from news reports and the portrayal of villains in our popular entertainment, Americans are bedeviled by fantasies about terrorism. They seem to believe that terrorism is the greatest threat to the United States and that it is becoming more widespread and lethal. They are likely to think that the United States is the most popular target of terrorists. And they almost certainly have the impression that extremist Islamic groups cause most terrorism. None of these beliefs are based in fact. ... While terrorism is not vanquished, in a world where thousands of nuclear warheads are still aimed across the continents, terrorism is not the biggest security challenge confronting the United States, and it should not be portrayed that way. Larry C. Johnson, "The Declining Terrorist Threat," New York Times, July 10, 2001. Johnson, a former CIA officer, was deputy director of the U.S. State Department's Office of Counterterrorism from 1989 to 1993.

Our performance has never been stronger our business model has never been more robust. We have the finest organization in American business today. -- Ken Lay, Chairman and Chief Executive, Enron Corporation (14 Aug 2001 e-mail to employees) In January 2002 Enron filed for the biggest ever US bancrupcy.

They'll never get Hussein - Dr Helen Caldicott, March 2003, "Helen's War - Portrait of a Dissident" (A 2003 film by Caldicott's niece.)