The empires of the future are the empires of the mind. Harvard University (1943-09-06).

The further back I look, the further forward I can see.

Unless some effective world supergovernment for the purpose of preventing war can be set up ... the prospects for peace and human progress are dark ....If .... it is found possible to build a world organization of irresistible force and inviolable authority for the purpose of securing peace, there are no limits to the blessings which all men enjoy and share.

A revolution is not a bed of roses. A revolution is a struggle between the future and the past.

It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time.

For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking. British Telecom advertisement (1993).

The ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen. When asked what qualities a politician required.

A love of tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril; but the new view must come, the world must roll forward.

The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.

The future influences the present just as much as the past.

This is the first age that's ever paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since we may not have one.

When you wonder about the mystery of yourself, look to Christ, who gives you the meaning of life. When you wonder what it means to be a mature person, look to Christ, who is the fulfillness of humanity. And when you wonder about your role in the future of the world look to Christ.

The future is never clear, and you pay a very high price in the stock market for a cheery consensus. Uncertainty is the friend of the buyer of long-term values.

What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone? How else can we put ourselves in harmonious relation with the great verities and consolations of the infinite and the eternal? And I avow my faith that we are marching towards better days. Humanity will not be cast down. We are going on swinging bravely forward along the grand high road and already behind the distant mountains is the promise of the sun.

There's no present. There's only the immediate future and the recent past.

People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it. Better yet, build it.

Whatever the future may bring, the universal application of these great principles is fully assured, though it may be long in coming. With the opening of the first power plant, incredulity will give way to wonderment, and this to ingratitude, as ever before.

The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter — for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way. He lives and labors and hopes.

War should belong to the tragic past, to history: it should find no place on humanity's agenda for the future.

The future starts today, not tomorrow.

We live in the midst of alarms; anxiety beclouds the future; we expect some new disaster with each newspaper we read. Speech at Bloomington (29 May 1856)

Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.

Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today.

Let the future tell the truth and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine.

What has the future in store for this strange being, born of a breath, of perishable tissue, yet Immortal, with his powers fearful and Divine? What magic will be wrought by him in the end? What is to be his greatest deed, his crowning achievement?
Long ago he recognized that all perceptible matter comes from a primary substance, or a tenuity beyond conception, filling all space, the Akasha or luminiferous ether, which is acted upon by the life-giving Prana or Creative Force, calling into existence, in never ending cycles, all things and phenomena. The primary substance, thrown into infinitesimal whirls of prodigious velocity, becomes gross matter; the force subsiding, the motion ceases and matter disappears, reverting to the primary substance.
Can man control this grandest, most awe-inspiring of all processes in nature? Can he harness her inexhaustible energies to perform all their functions at his bidding? more still cause them to operate simply by the force of his will?
If he could do this, he would have powers almost unlimited and supernatural. At his command, with but a slight effort on his part, old worlds would disappear and new ones of his planning would spring into being. He could fix, solidify and preserve the ethereal shapes of his imagining, the fleeting visions of his dreams. He could express all the creations of his mind on any scale, in forms concrete and imperishable. He could alter the size of this planet, control its seasons, guide it along any path he might choose through the depths of the Universe. He could cause planets to collide and produce his suns and stars, his heat and light. He could originate and develop life in all its infinite forms.