170 Top-Notch Quotes about the Future

"The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be."

Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry (October 30, 1871 – July 20, 1945) was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. His interests were sufficiently broad that he can be classified as a polymath.


"I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."

Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a theoretical physicist, philosopher and author who is widely regarded as one of the most influential and best known scientists and intellectuals of all time. A German-Swiss Nobel laureate, he is often regarded as the father of modern physics. He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect".


"My interest is in the future because I'm going to spend the rest of my life there."

Woody Allen , born Allan Stewart Konigsberg (December 1, 1935) is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author and playwright.


"The present is just an instant between past and future."

Dean Ray Koontz (born July 9, 1945) is an American author best known for his novels which could be described broadly as suspense thrillers. He also frequently incorporates elements of horror, science fiction, mystery, and satire.


"Idealism and realism meet in the actual."

Mary Parker Follett (3 September 1868 – 18 December 1933) was an American social worker, management consultant and pioneer in the fields of organizational theory and organizational behavior.


"Those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it."

Unknown [Help Us] (-)


"We learn form history that we learn nothing form history."

George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950) was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama and he wrote more than 60 plays.


"The most reliable way to anticipate the future is by understanding the present."

John Naisbitt (born January 15, 1929 in Salt Lake City, Utah) is an American author and public speaker in the area of futures studies. His first book Megatrends was published in 1982. It was the result of almost ten years of research. It was on the New York Times bestseller list for two years, mostly as #1. Megatrends was published in 57 countries and sold more than 14 million copies.


"Look not mournfully into the past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the present. Its thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future, without fear."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator. He was also the first American to translate Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy and was one of the five Fireside Poets.


"The farther behind I leave the past the closer I am to forging my own character."

Isabelle Eberhardt (17 February 1877 – 21 October 1904) was a Swiss-Algerian explorer and writer who lived and travelled extensively in North Africa. For the time she was an extremely liberated individual who rejected conventional European morality in favour of her own path and that of Islam. She died in a flash flood in the desert at the age of 27.