Future Perspective Quotes

The book has very specific qualities. Let's say in 2300 they discover the physical book, after having lived with the digital book for several hundred years. They'll be able to say, "Look at all the cool stuff you can have in a real book and how different it is." The differences are manifold.

A holiday gives one a chance to look backward and forward; to reset oneself by an inner compass.

Anticipation forward points the view.

What seems to us serious, significant and important will, in future times, be forgotten or won't seem important at all.

But at the same time, in reality, what a difference there is between the world today, and what it used to be! And with the passage of more time, some two or three hundred years, say, people will look back at our own times with horror, or with sneering laughter, because all of our present day life will appear so clumsy, and burdensome, extraordinarily inept and strange. Yes, certainly, what a life it will be then, what a life!

In every enterprise consider where you would come out.

When you're thinking about the rest of your life, you're never really thinking more than a couple years down the road.

I'm sure that someday children in schools will study the history of the men who made war as you study an absurdity. They'll be shocked, just as today we're shocked with cannibalism.

In a hundred years the historian will understand me better.

If you live like it’s the past and you behave like it’s the past, then guys from the future find it very hard to see you.

I like jeans, but I think in 100 years it's going to be crazy when we look back at the fact that everyone, every day for about 60 years straight, wore stiff blue pants as their default. Why?

One day America and all its presidents will be a footnote in history, but the kingdom of Jesus will never end.

I think by all accounts in the same way we look back on the anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish sentiments of our history with shame and derision and with a healthy dose of mockery, that's how we will very likely look back on this sort of anti-Muslim sentiment as well in the next generation.

It’s my considered opinion that in the fullness of time history will record the greatness of Collins and it will be recorded at my expense.

I don't want to give myself grades. I will leave evaluation of my achievements to history.

On a personal note, I think it won't be until after I've retired that I'm fully aware of what I've done or what I've gone on to achieve in my career.

When I write my autobiography after 20-25 years, I want 2014 to be the weakest year of my life.

One way to define wisdom is the ability to see, into the future, the consequences of your choices in the present. That ability can give you a completely different perspective on what the future might look like.

We now think it hilarious that medieval streets were used as open sewers. Equally, our descendants will say: 'You won't believe this, but people were once allowed to hurl a couple of tons of dangerous metal around smashing into each other.'

I think somehow people should be encouraged to think about a very long time horizon and I think this is true for businesses, it's true for governments and it's true for people doing things in the non-profit sector.

Music, art, writing - it gives us a sense of who we are, a sense of our history, a sense of our future and it should provide some kind of comfort. It's not just entertainment for entertainment's sake, it's an investment.

Even one's yesterdays could not continue to stir and move in a man's mind unless there were a future for those yesterdays to make.

In 'The Plato Papers' I wanted to get another perspective on the present moment by extrapolating into the distant future. So in that sense, there's a definite similarity of purpose between a book set in the future and a book set in the past.

I can't regret until the end. And I won't regret then, either.

A half century from now, our grandchildren are likely to look back at the era of mass employment in the market with the same sense of utter disbelief as we look upon slavery and serfdom in former times. The very idea that a human being's worth was measured almost exclusively by his or her productive output of goods and services and material wealth will seem primitive, even barbaric, and be regarded as a terrible loss of human value to our progeny living in a highly automated world where much of life is lived on the Collaborative Commons.