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Future quotes

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“And there is nothing like dreams for engendering the future.” Victor Hugo, “Les Misérables” - 1862

“We gave the Future to the winds, and slumbered tranquilly in the Present, weaving the dull world around us into dreams.” Edgar Allan Poe, “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” - 1842

“When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?” Chuck Palahniuk, “Invisible Monsters” - 1999

“So far as I can see, all political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.” George Orwell, “London Letter” - 1945

“The future isn't set in stone. Things change.” Stephenie Meyer, “Twilight” - 2005

“The laws of science do not distinguish between the past and the future.” Stephen Hawking, “A Brief History of Time” - 1988

“The taste of the usual was like cinders in his mouth, and there were moments when he felt as if he were being buried alive under his future.” Edith Wharton, “The Age of Innocence” - 1920

“I say decisively that nothing is so marked in modern writing as the prediction of such ideals in the future combined with the ignoring of them in the past.” G. K. Chesterton, “What's Wrong with the World” - 1910

“How do we know that his future will not be equal to our present?” Confucius, “Analects”

“Don't think of what's past! . . . I am not going to think outside of now. Why should we! Who knows what to-morrow has in store?” Thomas Hardy, “Tess of the d'Urbervilles” - 1891

“I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.” Herman Melville, “Moby-Dick” - 1851

“The future is just wasted on some people.” Chuck Palahniuk, “Invisible Monsters” - 1999

“His whole future seemed suddenly to be unrolled before him; and passing down its endless emptiness he saw the dwindling figure of a man to whom nothing was ever to happen.” Edith Wharton, “The Age of Innocence” - 1920

“I stole their future from them; I can only begin to repay by seeing what I can learn from their past.” Orson Scott Card, “Ender's Game” - 1985

“I don't live in either my past or my future. I'm interested only in the present.” Paulo Coelho, “The Alchemist” - 1988

“People are all over the world telling their one dramatic story and how their life has turned into getting over this one event. Now their lives are more about the past than their future.” Chuck Palahniuk, “Invisible Monsters” - 1999

“It is preposterous to suppose that the people of one generation can lay down the best and only rules of government for all who are to come after them, and under unforeseen contingencies.” Ulysses S. Grant, “Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant” - 1885

“For still there are so many things that I have never seen: in every wood in every spring there is a different green.” J. R. R. Tolkien, “The Fellowship of the Ring” - 1954

“The visions we offer our children shape the future.” Carl Sagan, “Pale Blue Dot” - 1994

“He didn’t know what he was going to — but it had to be better than what he was leaving behind.” J. K. Rowling, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone” - 1997

“For everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.” Marcus Aurelius, “Meditations” - c. 170 - 180

“I like men who have a future and women who have a past” Oscar Wilde, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” - 1890

“I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.” George Eliot, “The Mill on the Floss” - 1860

“The question of armaments, whether on land or sea, is the most immediately and intensely practical question connected with the future fortunes of nations and of mankind.” Woodrow Wilson, “A World League For Peace” - 22 January 1917

“The past and the present are within the field of my inquiry, but what a man may do in the future is a hard question to answer.” Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Hound of the Baskervilles” - 1902

“If you can look into the seeds of time, And say which grain will grow and which will not, Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear Your favours nor your hate.” William Shakespeare, “Macbeth” - 1623

“Every moment of your life is lived for the future — you go to high school so you can go to college so you can get a good job so you can get a nice house so you can afford to send your kids to college so they can get a good job so they can get a...” John Green, “Paper Towns” - 2008

“Economy is the method by which we prepare to-day to afford the improvements of to-morrow.” Calvin Coolidge, “State of the Union Address” - 8 December 1925

“The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.” Oscar Wilde, “A Woman of No Importance” - 1893

“We have trained them to think of the Future as a promised land which favoured heroes attain—not as something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is” C. S. Lewis, “The Screwtape Letters” - 1942

“We cannot always assure the future of our friends; we have a better chance of assuring our future if we remember who our friends are.” Henry Kissinger, “White House Years” - 1979

“The future stands still, dear Mr. Kappus, but we move in infinite space.” Rainer Maria Rilke, “Letters to a Young Poet” - 1929

“The past is consumed in the present and the present is living only because it brings forth the future.” James Joyce, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” - 1916

“In a cold as in a hot war it pays to know the enemy — not least because at some time in the future you may have the opportunity to turn him into a friend.” Margaret Thatcher, “The Downing Street Years” - 1993

“Who controls the past . . . controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” George Orwell, “1984” - 1949

“the Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time—for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays.” C. S. Lewis, “The Screwtape Letters” - 1942

“We are the dead. Our only true life is in the future.” George Orwell, “1984” - 1949

“It would seem, Adeimantus, that the direction in which education starts a man, will determine his future life.” Plato, “The Republic”

“FUTURE, n. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.” Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil's Dictionary” - 1906

“Trying to control the future is like trying to take the master carpenter's place. When you handle the master carpenter's tools, chances are that you'll cut your hand.” Lao Tzu, “Tao Te Ching” - 4th century BC

“This would mean that any time travel would be confined to the future. There would be no chance of Captain Kirk and the Starship Enterprise turning up at the present time.” Stephen Hawking, “A Brief History of Time” - 1988

“The mind of man is capable of anything—because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future.” Joseph Conrad, “Heart of Darkness” - 1899

“The past was like a bad dream; the future was all happy holiday as I moved southwards week by week, easily, lazily, lingering as long as I dared, but always heeding the call!” Kenneth Grahame, “The Wind in the Willows” - 1908

“I dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but in their results.” Edgar Allan Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher” - 1839

“What was the future? The future was a solid wall, not promising, not threatening — all bunk. No guarantees of anything, not even the guarantee that life isn’t one big joke.” Bob Dylan, “Chronicles, Volume One” - 2004

“At this rate, we'll never get to the future.” Chuck Palahniuk, “Invisible Monsters” - 1999

“The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable.” Oscar Wilde, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” - 1890

“this cult of the future is not only a weakness but a cowardice of the age.” G. K. Chesterton, “What's Wrong with the World” - 1910

“We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why. Not until the future eats the present, anyway. We know when it’s too late.” Stephen King, “11/22/63” - 2011

“A man devoid of hope and conscious of being so has ceased to belong to the future.” Albert Camus, “The Myth of Sisyphus” - 1942

Related topics

past present time life hope control fate dream boredom children change consequences ideals science infinite men women death trust youth

Related authors

Chuck Palahniuk (5)
George Orwell (4)
Oscar Wilde (3)
J. K. Rowling (3)
G. K. Chesterton (3)
Paulo Coelho (3)
Stephen Hawking (3)
Edgar Allan Poe (2)
James Joyce (2)
John Green (2)
C. S. Lewis (2)
Edith Wharton (2)
William Shakespeare (1)
Charlotte Brontë (1)
Herman Melville (1)
George Eliot (1)
Abraham Lincoln (1)
Arthur Conan Doyle (1)
David Hume (1)
Victor Hugo (1)

Related sources

Invisible Monsters (4)
1984 (3)
What's Wrong with the World (3)
State of the Union Address (3)
The Alchemist (3)
A Brief History of Time (3)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (2)
The Age of Innocence (2)
The Screwtape Letters (2)
Macbeth (1)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1)
The Fall of the House of Usher (1)
The Mystery of Marie Rogêt (1)
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1)
Jane Eyre (1)
Moby-Dick (1)
London Letter (1)
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1)
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1)
Les Misérables (1)

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