The future is equal parts promise and uncertainty. These quotes explore what lies ahead — technology, progress, hope, anxiety — and the uncomfortable truth that the future is being built right now by the choices we make today.
“While I take inspiration from the past, like most Americans, I live for the future.”
“The most important thing about global warming is this. Whether humans are responsible for the bulk of climate change is going to be left to the scientists, but it's all of our responsibility to leave this planet in better shape for the future generations than we found it.”
“I'd love to do more action stuff, in the future.”
“It is the child's understanding that teaches the adults the way of the future. They're still doing it today with modern technology.”
“Words matter, especially words defining complicated political arrangements, because they shape perceptions of the events of the past, attitudes toward policies being carried out in the present, and expectations about desirable directions for the future.”
“Every man gotta right to decide his own destiny.”
“I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.”
“The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy.”
“Let him who would enjoy a good future waste none of his present.”
“Depression is the inability to construct a future.”
“I've been doing musical theater since I was a kid. And look for a CD from me in the future. I want to write all the songs!”
“We're trying to set up a movie for me in the near future. It's going to be similar to the story of how I got discovered. Kinda like my own version of '8 Mile.'”
“The wave of the future is coming and there is no fighting it.”
“The German philosopher Walter Benjamin had the curious notion that we could change the past. For most of us, the past is fixed while the future is open.”
“My goal is more to be remembered. They'll remember this thing and like it in the future. The trick is to stay remembered long enough for that to happen.”
“The task of a university is the creation of the future, so far as rational thought and civilized modes of appreciation can affect the issue.”