"A pessimist is an optimist with more information."
Old parable.
"One must make a pessimistic analysis of the
situation, but when it's time for action, one must act
with hope." Gramsci.
"Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our
own times." Gustave Flaubert.
"The past went that-a-way. When faced with a totally
new situation, we tend always to attach ourselves to the
objects, to the flavor of the most recent past. We look
at the present through a rear view mirror. We march
backwards into the future." Marshall McLuhan, The
Medium is the Massage.
"There is absolutely no inevitability as long as
there is a willingness to contemplate what is
happening." Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the
Massage.
"I can't understand why people are frightened of new
ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones." John Cage.
"Technological progress is like an axe in the hands
of a pathological criminal." Albert Einstein.
"Men have become the tools of their tools." Henry
David Thoreau.
"The great thing in this world is not so much where
we stand, as in what direction we are moving." Oliver
Wendell Holmes.
"It is easy to predict a future, impossible to
predict the future." David Donnelly.
". . . prepare them to live in technology and at the
same time against technology . . . to develop a critical
awareness of the modern world." Jacques Ellul.
"All technologies should be assumed guilty until
proven innocent." Jerry Mander.
"The future cannot be dictated...it must be
negotiated." David Donnelly.
"As we invent our things, we reinvent ourselves."
David Donnelly.
" The trouble with the future is that there are so
many of them. " Unknown.
" Optimism is a strategy for making a better
future." Noam Chomsky.
"Que sera, sera. Whatever will be will be, the
future is not ours to see. Que sera, sera." Doris Day.
"Change is hard, but stagnation is fatal!" Peter C.
Bishop, Studies of the Future, University of
Houston-Clear Lake
" The future creeps in on small feet... We do not
awaken suddenly to a brave new world." S. Zuboff.
"Your real enemy--one you can neither fight nor
reason with...it's not 'who.' What you're up against is
the Future.
--Daddy Warbucks, to workers losing their jobs to
automation, "Little Orphan Annie," 1982
"In the name of "progress," our official culture is
striving to force the new media to do the work of the
old." Marshall McLuhan.
"We are all robots when uncritically involved with
our technologies." Marshall McLuhan.
"Every new technology necessitates a new war. "
Marshall McLuhan.
"Never make forecasts, especially about the future."
Sam Goldwyn.
"You can't see the future through a rearview
mirror." Peter Lynch, Beating the Street (Simon and
Schuster, 1993)
"The future never sleeps." Doug Michels.
"The most risky attitude to adopt towards the future
is not to think about it." Michel Godet.
From "Famous Forecasting Quotes"
"Those who have knowledge, don't predict. Those who
do predict, don't have knowledge." Lao Tzu, 6th Century
BC Chinese Poet
"I have seen the future and it is very much like the
present, only longer." Kehlog Albran, The Profit.
"Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's
about the future." Nils Bohr, Nobel laureate in Physics.
"A good forecaster is not smarter than everyone
else, he merely has his ignorance better organized."
Anonymous
"To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern
intellect." Oscar Wilde
"Foreknowledge of the future makes it possible to
manipulate both enemies and supporters." Raymond Aron in
The Opium of the Intellectuals.
