The future is no longer what it used to be
– and what else there is to say about the future

My 18 favourite quotes about the future. 

The future is one of those things: it is not real, it does not exist in perceptible reality, but only in people's thoughts and stories. And that is what makes it so powerful. Humans are the only species on earth that can make up stories like this! Perhaps that is precisely what makes us „godlike“, because it is indeed earth-shattering how the Israeli historian Y.N. Harari in his bestseller „Sapiens“.

Although it is still said from time to time that you shouldn't spin around like that, in view of the success of such head spinning, this no longer seems to be advice that should be taken seriously.

Of course, this includes the realisation that we cannot simply invent stories and thus futures, but also that these stories of tomorrow influence our actions today more than any past can.

When mankind at the beginning of the scientific revolution (around 1600)

  • discovered the future in human hands (cultural historian M. Hölscher, Die Entdeckung der Zukunft, 2018) and
  • this knowledge spread to the business world (Jens Beckert, 2018: Imagined Futures. Fictional expectations and capitalist dynamics),

It became and remains clear what a fundamental influence the imagined future has on our human destiny.

It is fair to say that for humanity as a whole, ideas about the future are much more influential than past experiences and imprints. Even if psychological findings and experiences raise doubts here, (modern!) man seems to be much more influenced by his as yet unrealised future, i.e. by his already realised past.

Therefore now my 18 favourites for the future – in the past, present and future.

PS: If you miss a quote that should have been included, please write it in the comments section! The readers – and the author – will thank you.

The future in the past

1. the future is usually already here before we expect it.

(unknown)

2. the future is no longer what it used to be.

(Yogi Berra)

3. the future has origins.

(R.K. Sprenger)

4. nobody would ever have crossed the ocean if they had had the chance, to abandon ship in a storm.

(Ch. Kettering)

5 If you want to read the future, you have to leaf through the past.

(Andre Malraux)

6 We are the memory of our future.

(unknown)

The future in the present

7. as a cat, the aim is to jump into the future of the mouse.

(unknown)

8 It is not important that we are bound to our history, but rather that we actually emerge from it.

9 He who risks nothing, risks too much.

(unknown)

10 I had just got used to yesterday when it suddenly became today...How am I supposed to gain confidence in tomorrow...?

(unknown)

11 Where the future is obstructed, the present becomes hell.

(unknown)

12 I am very interested in the future, because I will spend the rest of my life in it.

(Ch. Kettering)

The future in the future

13 It is easier to invent the future than to predict it.

(unknown)

14 The future usually arrives unannounced.

(unknown)

15 The hardest thing is to forget the undiscussed future.

(unknown)

16 In relationship matters, the future rarely gets better on its own.

(unknown)

17 The future belongs to us today. But what belongs to the future?

(unknown)

18 Why should we care for posterity? What has posterity done for us?

(unknown)

Are you missing a quote that you particularly liked about the future? Feel free to write it in the comment function…