Robert Heilbroner Quotes

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

Things we do not expect, happen more frequently than we wish.

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.

What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens.

You can't prepare for something that you can't prepare for.

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

They say that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger and I've learnt a great deal, but you can never predict the future, so the best thing is just to do whatever you're asked to do to the best of your ability.

You know, I don't know what the future will bring, but I'm ready for whatever comes!

There's always the risk that there are unknown unknowns.

Life doesn't always give us what we are expecting.

I don't want to set the world up for surprises.

Nothing is as simple as we hope it will be.

So while I can't tell you if bringing a child into this world is the morally-responsible to do, I can say that the future, much like the present, is going to be a whole lot better than you think.

Most things in life come as a surprise.

The joys we expect are not so bright, nor the troubles so dark as we fancy they will be.

The unknown used to be really scary, just that fear of, 'What's next? What if I'm not prepared?' I just don't feel that way anymore. I feel like the best is yet to come.

The future has a way of arriving unannounced.

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

History is only a feeble light, for the rubrics were meant to answer future problems unimagined and unimaginable

We must make ourselves strong to meet a future which is dark and obscure.

Who likes surprises? Nobody I know likes surprises. But facts change on the ground.

I am someone who hopes for the best and prepares for the worst.

The thing about the future is that it never feels the way we thought it would.

In boxing, they say it's the punch you don't see coming that knocks you out. In the wider world, the reality we ignore or deny is the one that weakens our most impassioned efforts toward improvement.

The future is unwritten.