John D. Barrow Quotes

Statistics were magic like this: they could tell you with near-certainty that a thing would occur, without a hint of when or where.

Of course, economic forecasts must be revised when new information arrives and are thus necessarily provisional.

I figure lots of predictions is best. People will forget the ones I get wrong and marvel over the rest.

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

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 can be almost certain of being wrong about the future, if we are wrong about the past.

We need to stop, and admit it: we have a prediction problem. We love to predict things—and we aren’t very good at it.

Forecasting is very difficult, especially when it involves the future.

The only useful function of a statistician is to make predictions, and thus to provide a basis for action.

I will not give you counsel, saying do this, or do that. For not in doing or contriving, nor in choosing between this course and another, can I avail; but only in knowing what was and is, and in part also what shall be.

Only people unhappy in the present seek to know the future.

I agree with the realistic Irishman who said he preferred to prophesy after the event.

Newspapers tell beforehand what is going to happen - maybe.

I never quite trust futurists because I think they're kind of telling us what they think our future should be.

Distinguishing the signal from the noise requires both scientific knowledge and self-knowledge: the serenity to accept the things we cannot predict, the courage to predict the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

It is the ability to make predictions about the future that is the crux of intelligence.

I am profoundly skeptical about our abilities to predict the future in general, and human behavior in particular.

You can't do anything about the past. And you don't know what the future is.

Probability is not about the odds, but about the belief in the existence of an alternative outcome, cause, or motive.

If ... the past may be no Rule for the future, all Experience becomes useless and can give rise to no Inferences or Conclusions.

I deal in facts, not forecasting the future. That's crystal ball stuff. That doesn't work.

The past has revealed to me the structure of the future.

Prediction is difficult - particularly when it involves the future.

Pundits forecast not because they know, but because they are asked.

The best predictor of future events is probably past events.