Bernard Lewis Quotes

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

I shall go further and say that even if an examination of the past could lead to any valid prediction concerning man's future, that prediction would be the contrary of reassuring.

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

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.

We never know enough about the infinitely complex circumstances of any past event to prophesy the future by analogy.

Never make predictions, especially about the future.

History shows us that people are terrible about guessing what is going to happen - next week, next month, and especially next year.

We do not know enough about how the present will lead into the future.

History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.

You can never plan the future by the past.

History seems to be so clumsy.

The future ain't what it used to be.

Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future.

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

What happens today can affect what happens tomorrow, but it cannot affect what happened yesterday.

Study the past, if you would divine the future.

Even historians with knowledge of the event, and with the materials before them on which to form a judgment, see but little way into the causes and consequences of the great events in human history.

None of us posses a crystal ball.

I can see ... only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.

History is opaque. You see what comes out, not the script that produces events, ... The generator of historical events is different from the events themselves, much as the minds of the gods cannot be read just by witnessing their deeds.

History is but the unrolled scroll of prophecy.

History shows you prospects by starlight, or at best by the waning moon.

The further backward we look, the further forward we are likely to see.

Nothing is inevitable in history.

Tis easy to see, hard to foresee.