Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.
—Albert Camus, 1951A change of fortune hurts a wise man no more than a change of the moon.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1732Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.
—William Jennings Bryan, 1899The less a man knows about the past and the present, the more insecure must prove to be his judgment of the future.
—Sigmund Freud, 1927Time will reveal everything. It is a babbler and speaks even when not asked.
—Euripides, c. 425 BCAll progress is based upon a universal, innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
—Samuel Butler, c. 1890The future comes like an unwelcome guest.
—Edmund Gosse, 1873I don’t try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.
—Ray Bradbury, 1992Little folks become their little fate.
—Horace, c. 20 BCDo not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.
—Book of Proverbs, c. 150 BCThe world began without man, and it will end without him.
—Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1955The 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.
—George Moore, 1888The future is no more uncertain than the present.
—Walt Whitman, 1856As natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection.
—Charles Darwin, 1859He alone who owns the youth gains the future.
—Adolf Hitler, 1935I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1816Not 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.
—James Russell Lowell, 1884I’ve seen the future, brother; it is murder.
—Leonard Cohen, 1992Fate leads the willing and drags along those who hang back.
—Cleanthes, c. 250 BCMy interest is in the future, because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.
—Charles F. Kettering, 1946God seems to have left the receiver off the hook, and time is running out.
—Arthur Koestler, 1967Every man takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world.
—Arthur Schopenhauer, 1851We must confess that at present the rich predominate, but the future will be for the virtuous and ingenious.
—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
—Oscar Wilde, 1893Tomorrow never comes, man. It’s all the same fucking day.
—Janis Joplin, 1972Often the prudent, far from making their destinies, succumb to them; it is destiny which makes them prudent.
—Voltaire, 1764Men are able to assist fortune but not to thwart her. They can weave her designs, but they cannot destroy them.
—Niccolò Machiavelli, 1531The future, like everything else, is no longer quite what it used to be.
—Paul Valéry, 1931The future...something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.
—C.S. Lewis, 1941People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.
—Edmund Burke, 1790It would be madness, and inconsistency, to suppose that things which have never yet been performed can be performed without employing some hitherto untried means.
—Francis Bacon, 1620