Top 100 Future Quotes of All Time

A short, finished list rather than an endless feed: 100 of the best future quotes ever written, picked out of the full future archive on QuoteForever. You will find Bob Marley, Dan Quayle, Eckhart Tolle and Francis Atterbury among them.

Read the list top to bottom, or use it as a starting point - every author name links to everything else they said, and every quote has its own page you can share or turn into an image.

1

Don't be so shortsighted that if it doesn't happen right now, you're not going to be happy. You are sowing seeds that will reap a great harvest for generations to come.

2

Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.

3

I don't know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.

4

Louis Armstrong playing trumpet on the Judgment Day.

5

Who would fare better in this world of fitful time? Those who have seen the future and live only one life? Or those who have not seen the future and wait to live life? Or those who deny the future and live two lives?

6

...most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.

7

There is a case, and a strong case, for that particular form of indolence that allows us to move through life knowing only what immediately concerns us.

8

It is the business of the future to be dangerous.

9

The beauty of dystopia is that it lets us vicariously experience future worlds - but we still have the power to change our own.

10

CLOCK, n. A machine of great moral value to man, allaying his concern for the future by reminding him what a lot of time remains to him.

11

But my future is a secret. / It is as shy as a mole.

12

A tree is beautiful, but what's more, it has a right to life; like water, the sun and the stars, it is essential. Life on earth is inconceivable without trees. Forests create climate, climate influences peoples' character, and so on and so forth. There can be neither civilization nor happiness if forests crash down under the axe, if the climate is harsh and severe, if people are also harsh and severe. ... What a terrible future!

13

It is reasonable to hope that in the not too distant future we shall be competent to understand so simple a thing as a star.

14

One day the stars will be as familiar to each man as the landmarks, the curves, and the hills on the road that leads to his door, and one day that will be an airborne life.

15

The main goal of the future is to stop violence. The world is addicted to it.

16

History is the best guide to the future.

17

We make the future sustainable when we invest in the poor, not when we insist on their suffering.

18

I haven't been faithful to my own advice in the past. I will in the future.

19

I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children.

20

Every man gotta right to decide his own destiny.

21

My future is righteousness.

22

In this bright future you can't forget your past.

23

The white people should go back to Europe, and the country should be returned to the American Indians. This is the future I would like to see for the so-called United States.

24

No other investment yields as great a return as the investment in education. An educated workforce is the foundation of every community and the future of every economy.

25

Somebody who can reckon with the past, who can live with the past in the present, and move towards the future - that's fabulous.

26

A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband, while a man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.

27

Atlantis will rise again.

28

I just don't want to live like I used to. And at some point, I'm going to put a gag order on myself in terms of talking about the past. I've got to slam the door and deal with the present and the future.

29

It's a question of whether we're going to go forward into the future, or past to the back.

30

The future will be a better tomorrow.

31

The future is much like the present, only longer.

32

The Internet: transforming society and shaping the future through chat.

33

The future of life on earth depends on our ability to take action. Many individuals are doing what they can, but real success can only come if there's a change in our societies and our economics and in our politics. I've been lucky in my lifetime to see some of the greatest spectacles that the natural world has to offer. Surely we have a responsibility to leave for future generations a planet that is healthy, inhabitable by all species

34

After the Berlin Wall came down I visited that city and I will never forget it. The abandoned checkpoints. The sense of excitement about the future. The knowledge that a great continent was coming together. Healing those wounds of our history is the central story of the European Union.

35

It is my contention that an agent ideal to the use of the scientific militarist, for both the air raid and the long distance bombardment is now in the process of development; that its eventual perfection is but a matter of time; and its use in warfare is certain to occur. I refer to the rocket. The perfection of the rocket in my opinion will give to future warfare the horror unknown in previous conflicts and will make possible destruction of nations, in a cool, passionless and scientific fashion.

36

Happy accidents are real gifts, and they can open the door to a future that didn't even exist. It's kind of nice sometimes to set up something to encourage or allow happy accidents to happen.

37

Every time I've made a plan in my Hollywood acting career, something else has happened, so I've gotten out of the habit of trying to predict the future.

38

The world must learn to work together, or finally it will not work at all.

39

The power for creating a better future is contained in the present moment: You create a good future by creating a good present.

40

You can always cope with the present moment, but you cannot cope with something that is only a mind projection - you cannot cope with the future.

41

City people try to buy time as a rule, when they can, whereas country people are prepared to kill time, although both try to cherish in their mind's eye the notion of a better life ahead.

42

The future... seems to me no unified dream but a mince pie, long in the baking, never quite done

43

The unpredictability inherent in human affairs is due largely to the fact that the by-products of a human process are more fateful than the product.

44

of all the foolish Fears of Humankind, Fear of the Future is by far the most foolish.

45

The future is religion and commerce, aphrodisiac and Benzedrine, a mother of mysterious comfort and a mistress of familiar ravishments ever on the verge of embracing or destroying us.

46

There is no present or future-only the past, happening over and over again-now.

47

Too many marketers assume that future will hold back and wait until they're ready for it. It won't.

48

Nothing can be reckoned good or bad to us in this life, any further than it indisposes us for the enjoyment of another.

49

The things of another world being distant, operate but faintly upon us: to remedy this inconvenience, we must frequently revolve their certainty and importance.

50

A man's wits are better employed in bearing up under the misfortunes that lie upon him at present than in foreseeing those that may come upon him hereafter.

51

Not only our future economic soundness but the very soundness of our democratic institutions depends on the determination of our government to give employment to idle men.

52

Today is, after all, today, but yesterday is of the same substance as tomorrow.

53

Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside, is available, we shall, in an emotional sense, acquire an additional dimension.

54

We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.

55

The fact remains that, if the supply of energy failed, modern civilization would come to an end as abruptly as does the music of an organ deprived of wind.

56

Diversification and globalization are the keys to the future.

57

If you make a decision to fight for future of your own country you have to consider all the consequences.

58

There's no present. There's only the immediate future and the recent past.

59

Some think that solar work is pretty well played out. In reality, it is only beginning.

60

Perhaps the safest prediction we can make about the future is that it will surprise us.

61

It has been well said that no man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is, when tomorrow's burden is added to the burden of today, that the weight is more than a man can bear. Never load yourselves so, my friends. If you find yourselves so loaded, at least remember this: it is your own doing, not God's. He begs you to leave the future to Him, and mind the present.

62

Planning ahead is a measure of class. The rich and even the middle class plan for future generations, but the poor can plan ahead only a few weeks or days.

63

We already have the statistics for the future: the growth percentages of pollution, overpopulation, desertification. The future is already in place.

64

The past, the present and the future are really one: they are today.

65

No one can be certain where a nation which spans two continents, whose history begins in the faint traces of early civilization, a nation now struggling to find a new and valid philosophy of existence, will be propelled by the transcendental forces of the nuclear age.

66

All of us should be involved in our own futures to create a world that our children will want to live in.

67

Youth does not think into the future far enough, therefore we must encourage them to dream of great tomorrows.

68

We can't take a slipshod and easygoing attitude toward education in this country. And by "we" I don't mean "somebody else," but I mean me and I mean you. It is the future of our country-yours and mine-which is at stake.

69

As the humanities and liberal arts are downsized, privatized, and commodified, higher education finds itself caught in the paradox of claiming to invest in the future of young people while offering them few intellectual, civic, and moral supports.

70

Just what future the Designer of the universe has provided for the souls of men I do not know, I cannot prove. But I find that the whole order of Nature confirms my confidence that, if it is not like our noblest hopes and dreams, it will transcend them.

71

Business, more than any other occupation, is a continual dealing with the future; it is a continual calculation, an instinctive exercise in foresight.

72

Go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear and with a manly heart.

73

One might as well attempt to calculate mathematically the contingent forms of the tinkling bits of glass in a kaleidoscope as to look through the tube of the future and foretell its pattern.

74

Despite the immense distance between our own solar system (including the earth) and the nearest other solar systems, a journey from one system to another is theoretically possible, once an unlimited source of power is developed.

75

We live on this very small and fragile planet: a world in which there is poverty and injustice is never going to be a safe and secure world

76

A wise God shrouds the future in obscure darkness. [Lat., Prudens futuri temporis exitum Caliginosa nocte premit deus.]

77

I believe life is a series of near misses. A lot of what we ascribe to luck is not luck at all. It's seizing the day and accepting responsibility for your future. It's seeing what other people don't see And pursuing that vision.

78

To be hopeful in bad times is based on the fact that human history is not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand Utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

79

Happiness is a present attitude and not a future condition.

80

I can not 'make my mark' for all time - those concepts are mutually exclusive. 'Lasting effect' is a self-contradictory term. Meaning does not exist in the future and neither do I. Nothing will have meaning 'ultimately.' Nothing will even mean tomorrow what it did today. Meaning changes with the context. My meaningfulness is here. It is enough that I am of value to someone today. It is enough that I make a difference now.

81

Anxiety uses imagination to picture something you don't want. Vision uses imagination to picture something you DO want. Either way, you tend to get what you focus on. Imagine a future where you shine, others thrive, and the light of hope shines brighter in the world. If you can see it, you can be it.

82

Remember that the future is not somewhere we are going, it is something we are creating. Everyday we do things that make some futures more probable and others less likely.

83

A person who has sympathy for mankind in the lump, faith in its future progress, and desire to serve the great cause of this progress, should be called not a humanist, but a humanitarian, and his creed may be designated as humanitarianism.

84

No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.

85

We live in the future. Even the happiness of the present is made up mostly of that delightful discontent which the hope of better things inspires.

86

Future complications in the strings between the cans. But no prints can come from fingers, if machines become our hands.

87

Predictions are preposterous.

88

Neither in the life of the individual nor in that of mankind is it desirable to know the future.

89

If we were logical, the future would be bleak, indeed. But we are more than logical. We are human beings, and we have faith, and we have hope, and we can work.

90

We risk great peril if we kill off this spirit of adventure, for we cannot predict how and in what seemingly unrelated fields it will manifest itself. A nation that loses its forward thrust is in danger, and one of the most effective ways to retain that thrust is to keep exploring possibilities. The sense of exploration is intimately bound up with human resolve, and for a nation to believe that it is still committed to a forward motion is to ensure its continuance.

91

Everything that ever happened is still happening. Past, present and future keep happening in the eternity which is Here and Now.

92

Biology has at least 50 more interesting years.

93

Children are not casual guests in our home. They have been loaned to us temporarily for the purpose of loving them and instilling a foundation of values on which their future lives will be built.

94

What we are doing to the future of our children, and the other species on the planet, is a clear moral issue.

95

A soil adapted to the growth of plants, is necessarily prepared and carefully preserved; and, in the necessary waste of land which is inhabited, the foundation is laid for future continents, in order to support the system of the living world.

96

We live at a time when emotions and feelings count more than truth, and there is a vast ignorance of science

97

It's about time we make the well-being of our young people more important than ideology and politics. As a country, we benefit from investing in their future by investing in teen pregnancy prevention.

98

Somewhere inside we do know everything about ourselves. There is no real forgetting. Perhaps we know somewhere, too, about all there is to come.

99

Another life, if it were not better than this, would be less a promise than a threat.

100

People invest in your ability to deliver to them a more favorable future.

More Future quotes

This is the short list. The full future quotes collection holds every quote on the subject in the archive, and the picture quotes are ready to share as images.

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