Forecasting Addendum

After the recent weeks of blog post topics, I thought you might like a nice relaxing addendum to last Friday’s blog post, Trust in Forecasts. I’m not much for quotations that aspire to inspire, but I do appreciate those that offer insight, such as today’s quotations on forecasting the future. Although borrowing and paraphrasing should be expected, I’ve shown attributions, without doing any sourcing myself. (All photos are from multiple websites.)

Quotations on the Difficulty of Forecasting the Future
 

Statue of Lao Tzu, located
north of Quanzhou, China,
at base of Mount Qingyuan

 "Those who have knowledge, don't predict. Those who predict, don't have knowledge." Lao Tzu (aka, Laozi), Chinese poet, 6th century B.C., and reputed founder of Taoism.

 

 

Niels Bohr

"Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." Niels Bohr, Nobel laureate in physics.
 

Paul Samuelson

"Wall Street indices predicted nine out of the last five recessions." Paul A. Samuelson, economist.


 

 

Edgar R. Fiedler

"He who lives by the crystal ball soon learns to eat ground glass." Edgar R. Fiedler, economist, U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury.




"Forecasting is the art of saying what will happen, and then explaining why it didn't." Anonymous.


 Quotations on Accepting the Future

Albert Einstein

“I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.” Albert Einstein, Nobel laureate in physics.


 

Abraham Lincoln

“The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.” Abraham Lincoln, US president.

 

Charles F. Kettering

“I look to the future because that's where I'm going to spend the rest of my life.” Charles F. Kettering, inventor, engineer, businessman (also George Burns, comedian).
 



Quotations on Influencing the Future
 

Deepak Chopra

“When you make a choice, you change the future.” Deepak Chopra, author and public speaker.


 

Haruki Murakami

“You throw a stone into a deep pond. Splash. The sound is big, and it reverberates throughout the surrounding area. What comes out of the pond after that? All we can do is stare at the pond, holding our breath.” Haruki Murakami, author.

Yogi Berra’s Quotations about the Future
(In memory of the Hall of Fame baseball player, whose New York Yankees beat my Brooklyn Dodgers too many times.)

Yogi Berra

“The future ain’t what it used to be.”

“It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” (Do you think Yogi borrowed this from Niels Bohr, above?)

“You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.”

“It ain’t over ’til it’s over.” 
 
P.S.

www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/future
www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/79014.Yogi_Berra
thinkexist.com/quotations/future/
www1.secam.ex.ac.uk/famous-forecasting-quotes.dhtml or www.met.reading.ac.uk/Research/cag-old/forecasting/quotes.html