Learned Hand Quotes

The future? Like unwritten books and unborn children, you don't talk about it.

You can never plan the future by the past.

History does not repeat itself. Nor does it unfold in cycles. The real future is contingent, rich beyond imagining, a perennial gobsmack, tragic and glorious in equal measure; the pundits' future, spun of 'conventional wisdom,' is only a sucker punch to that common-sense fact.

The future is going to require really smart people. What we think are crises today probably will be no big deal, and we have no idea what will really be crises in the future.

Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable.

I know of no way of judging the future but by the past.

History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.

Historians emphasize contingency, complexity, and the unanticipated ... Few principles apply all the time.

History shows you don't know what the future brings.

I like to do everything you can possibly do before you go into rehearsal, because once we are in rehearsal or on the stage there will be a problem I didn't anticipate. It's really good to think we got it all nailed - of course you've never got it all nailed.

The past guarantees you nothing in the future if the rules change.

The trouble with the future is that is usually arrives before we're ready for it.

How can you wonder what's going to happen when you don't know who's going to be the new guy in town?

I don't know that I'd necessarily want to see into the future. I don't want to know what's happening next.

You know, people talk about this being an uncertain time. You know, all time is uncertain. I mean, it was uncertain back in - in 2007, we just didn't know it was uncertain. It was - uncertain on September 10th, 2001. It was uncertain on October 18th, 1987, you just didn't know it.

The future has a way of arriving unannounced.

Predicting the future is very difficult. As a historian I have trouble trying to predict the past.

History is totally unpredictable.

A Westerner is someone who is aware of tomorrow, of it being definitely different from yesterday and accepts not knowing what the future will bring

Justice and fairness and history are not necessarily decisive in what happens.

You never know how history is going to view things.

No man can tell what the future may bring forth

The problem in any constitutional change is the great care put to solve the problems of the past instead of grasping those of the future.

Nothing is inevitable in history.

The future is always coming up with surprises for us, and the best way to insulate yourself from these surprises is to diversify.