Forecasts Quotes

For-profit weather forecasters rarely predict exactly a 50 percent chance of rain, which might seem wishy-washy and indecisive to consumers.41 Instead, they'll flip a coin and round up to 60, or down to 40, even though this makes the forecasts both less accurate and ~ Nate Silver

It's not a good idea to take a forecast from someone wearing a tie. If possible, tease people who take themselves and their knowledge too seriously. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Intrinsic value can be defined simply: It is the discounted value of the cash that can be taken out of a business during its remaining life. The calculation of intrinsic value, though, is not so simple. As our definition suggests, intrinsic value is an estimate rather than a precise figure, and it is additionally an estimate that must be changed if interest rates move or forecasts of future cash flows are revised. ~ Warren Buffett

Tonight's forecast: DARK. Continued mostly dark tonight, turning to wildly scattered light in the morning ~ George Carlin

The IEA forecasts that production from oilfields, which have started production up to 2011, will nearly drop two-thirds by 2035. ~ Peter Voser

Forecasts vary in horizon, from a few seconds up to a few days in financial markets, compared to from one to several months for macro variables. We have to provide uncertainty intervals around the central forecasts to indicate the extent to which we are unclear about the future. ~ Clive Granger

I never make forecasts but whoever wins that game will win the final. ~ Ken Bates

Weather forecast for tonight: dark. ~ George Carlin

Most long-range forecasts of what is technically feasible in future time periods dramatically underestimate the power of future developments because they are based on what I call the "intuitive linear" view of history rather than the "historical exponential" view. ~ Ray Kurzweil

Weathermen merely forecast rain to keep everyone else off the golf course ~ Larry David

Cisco systems forecasts that by 2022, the Internet of Everything will generate $14.4 trillion in cost savings and revenue. ~ Jeremy Rifkin

It is almost possible to predict one or two days in advance, within a rather broad range of probability, what the weather is going to be; it is even thought that it will not be impossible to publish daily forecasts, which would be very useful to soci. ~ Antoine Lavoisier

I find my past in my present, and from these forecast my future. ~ Amos Bronson Alcott

Some of what these pamphlets [of astrological forecasts] say will turn out to be true, but most of it time and experience will expose as empty and worthless. The latter part will be forgotten literally: written on the winds while the former will be carefully entered in people's memories, as is usual with the crowd. ~ Johannes Kepler

In those years before mobile phones, email and Skype, travelers depended on the rudimentary communications system known as the postcard. Other methods
the long-distance phone call, the telegram
were marked "For Emergency Use Only." So my parents waved me off into the unknown, and their news bulletins about me would have been restricted to "Yes, he's arrived safely,"and "Last time we heard he was in Oregon," and "We expect him back in a few weeks." I'm not saying this was necessarily better, let alone more character-forming; just that in my case it probably helped not to have my parents a button's touch away, spilling out anxieties and long-range weather forecasts, warning me against floods, epidemics and psychos who preyed on backpackers. ~ Julian Barnes

All the forecasts were tentatively hopeful about the idea of it not actually continuing to rain for the remainder of ever, but Varney had his doubts. It really did seem slightly sinister. ~ Vivian Shaw

People don't realize that we cannot forecast the future. What we can do is have probabilities of what causes what, but that's as far as we go. And I've had a very successful career as a forecaster, starting in 1948 forward. The number of mistakes I have made are just awesome. There is no number large enough to account for that. ~ Alan Greenspan

They say that eclipses are portents of disaster, because disasters are so common, and misfortune occurs often enough for these forecasts to be right, whereas if they said that eclipses were portents of good fortune they would often be wrong. ~ Blaise Pascal

The most reliable way to forecast the future is to try to understand the present. ~ John Naisbitt

When Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg was before us in 1993, she said that her standard was to give no hints, no forecasts, no previews, and declined to answer dozens of questions. ~ Orrin Hatch

A potentially useful property of forecasts based on cointegration is that when extended some way ahead, the forecasts of the two series will form a constant ratio, as is expected by some asymptotic economic theory. ~ Clive Granger

We ignore outlooks and forecasts ... we're lousy at it and we admit it ... everyone else is lousy too, but most people won't admit it. ~ Martin J. Whitman

This is my long-run forecast in brief: The material conditions of life will continue to get better for most people, in most countries, most of the time, indefinetly. Within a century or two, all nations and most of humanity will be at or above today's Western living standards. I also speculate, however, that many people will continue to think and say that the conditions of life are getting worse. ~ Julian Simon

Thick February mists cling heavily To the dead earth and to each leafless tree, And closer down upon the hilltops draw, Dull forecasts there of bright, sure-coming spring; Yet the heart gathers hope and strange delight From this dear, unlovely, wished-for sight Of leaden-misted twilights lengthening. ~ Emma Lazarus

Music forecasts the past, recalls the future. Now and then the difference falls away, and in one simple gift of circling sound, the ear solves the scrambled cryptogram. One abiding rhythm, present and always, and you're free. But a few measures more, and the cloak of time closes back around you. ~ Richard Powers

Makridakis and Hibon reached the sad conclusion that "statistically sophisticated or complex methods do not necessarily provide more accurate forecasts than simpler ones. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

We've long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune tellers look good. Even now, Charlie and I continue to believe that short-term market forecasts are poison and should be kept locked up in a safe place, away from children and also from grown-ups who behave in the market like children. ~ Warren Buffett

The Doomsayers have always had their uses, since they trigger the coping mechanism that often prevents the events they forecast. ~ Walter Wriston

During the early 1960s, I decided to supplement research support for quantitative economic studies at Pennsylvania by selling econometric forecasts to private and public sector buyers. ~ Lawrence R. Klein

Forecasts usually tell us more of the forecaster than of the forecast ~ Warren Buffett

Nabhan's forecasts nailed three of the largest seismic events on the West Coast in 1996. ~ Erin Aubry Kaplan

Graphene has unique mechanical and electrical properties, which promise many applications. Inspired by graphene's promise, people have figured out some considerably more efficient ways to make it! One optimistic, but maybe not crazy, study forecasts that a 100 billion market in graphene will develop over the next few years. ~ Frank Wilczek

People are like their own ecosystems, little planets made up of islands and climates and forecasts. Some of us carry jagged mountain peaks, and some of us carry lakes. ~ Katie Kacvinsky

Did you ever notice that most of us relate to our lives like we have no control or say over them? Especially in areas where we're not proud. We speak about ourselves like we're reporting on the weather, making sweeping generalizations...And boy do we ever believe our own 'forecasts. ~ Lauren Handel Zander

Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis is commonly regarded as one of the classics of cinema, and at the time it was probably the most expensive film ever made. Only in light of recent restoration work, though, can we see how explicitly it draws on apocalyptic themes in its prophetic depiction of modern society. Partly, Metropolis reflects the ideas of Oswald Spengler, whose sensationally popular book The Decline of the West appeared in 1918. Spengler presented nightmare forecasts of the vast megalopolis, ruled by the superrich, with politics reduced to demagoguery and Caesarism, and religion marked by strange oriental cults. Lang borrowed that model but added explicit references to the Bible, and particularly Revelation. In the future world of Metropolis, the ruling classes dwell in their own Tower of Babel, while the industrial working class is literally enslaved to Moloch. ~ Philip Jenkins

You realise Group Captain that this might be the most important weather forecast in history? ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

Don't let yourself forget how many doctors have died, furrowing their brows over how many deathbeds. How many astrologers, after pompous forecasts about others' ends. How many philosophers, after endless disquisitions on death and immortality. How many warriors, after inflicting thousands of casualties themselves. How many tyrants, after abusing the power of life and death atrociously, as if they were themselves immortal.
How many whole cities have met their end: Helike, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and countless others.

And all the ones you know yourself, one after another. One who laid out another for burial, and was buried himself, and then the man who buried him - all in the same short space of time.

In short, know this: Human lives are brief and trivial. Yesterday a blob of semen; tomorrow embalming fluid, ash.

To pass through this brief life as nature demands. To give it up without complaint.

Like an olive that ripens and falls.

Praising its mother, thanking the tree it grew on. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Experts can sound pretty impressive, of course, especially when they bolster their claims by citing their years of training and experience in a field. Yet hundreds of studies have shown that, compared to predictions based on actuarial data, predictions based on an expert's years of training and personal experience are rarely better than chance. But when an expert is wrong, the centerpiece of his or her professional identity is threatened. Therefore, dissonance theory predicts that the more self-confident and famous experts are, the less likely they will be to admit mistakes. And that is just what Tetlock found. Experts reduced the dissonance caused by their failed forecasts by coming up with explanations of why they would have been right "if only" - if only that improbable calamity had not intervened; if only the timing of events had been different; if only blah-blah-blah. ~ Carol Tavris

Many people object to "wasting money in space" yet have no idea how much is actually spent on space exploration. The CSA's budget, for instance, is less than the amount Canadians spend on Halloween candy every year, and most of it goes toward things like developing telecommunications satellites and radar systems to provide data for weather and air quality forecasts, environmental monitoring and climate change studies. Similarly, NASA's budget is not spent in space but right here on Earth, where it's invested in American businesses and universities, and where it also pays dividends, creating new jobs, new technologies and even whole new industries. ~ Chris Hadfield

The MD is well aware that the forecasts are no good but he needs them for planning purposes ... ~ Kenneth Arrow

My one remaining professional ambition is to read the shipping forecast. I live in hope. ~ Samuel West

The affairs of this world are so shifting and depend on so many accidents, that it is hard to form any judgment concerning the future; nay, we see from experience that the forecasts even of the wise almost always turn out false. ~ Francesco Guicciardini

I have spent too long being able to manipulate the answers I want from market research to rely upon its findings any more than I do weather forecasts. ~ Charles Saatchi

Nuclear deterrence will remain a vital aspect of security. or Nuclear deterrence will have a smaller role in future security.

Sources are split in their assessment of the importance of nuclear weapons and the validity of traditional nuclear deterrence in the 2001 - 2015 period. On the one hand are those who see nuclear weapons as decreasingly effective tools in deterring war. On the other are those experts who concede that nuclear weapons may have a different role than at the height of the Cold War, but who argue that they remain the ultimate deterrent, with considerable effect on the actions of even rogue states.

Many experts who state a moral opposition to nuclear weapons have translated this into forecasts of a globalized world in which nuclear deterrence no longer makes sense. With greater economic interdependence, this argument runs, even the so-called "rogue states" will be reconciled to the international order, renouncing or reducing their overt or covert nuclear arsenals. ~ Sam J. Tangredi

No one can forecast the economy with certainty. ~ Jamie Dimon

I have no use whatsoever for projections or forecasts. They create an illusion of apparent precision. The more meticulous they are, the more concerned you should be. We never look at projections, but we care very much about, and look very deeply at, track records. If a company has a lousy track record, but a very bright future, we will miss the opportunity ... ~ Warren Buffett

Financial security is a constant in my life. I allow my income to constantly expand, no matter what the newspapers and economists say. I move beyond my present income, and I go beyond the economic forecasts. I do not listen to people out there telling me how far I can go or what I can do. ~ Louise Hay

I have been fighting climate change for two decades, and people often ask me how I remain hopeful in the face of extreme weather and grim forecasts. The answer is simple: I see countless solutions spreading across the nation and across the world. But we need more investment. ~ Frances Beinecke

You should expect little or nothing from Wall Street stock pickers who hope to be more accurate than the market in predicting the future of prices. And you should not expect much from pundits making long-term forecasts. ~ Daniel Kahneman

I've been doing lot of work, and hopefully will bring it to fruition in a way people can see it, really understanding - this is going to sound funny, but what does government really do, how is it really funded, and what measures exist to evaluate how it does at what it does? No forecast, no policy, no prediction, just a realistic perspective on what is. Call it like a "10k for government" we've been working on with a website, with additional data. ~ Steve Ballmer

Experts kill me. Economic experts, that is. Corporations, foundations, publications and governments pay them by the bucketful, and they fill buckets with forecasts that change more frequently than white-collar, workers do shirts. What Lies Ahead is the usual title. What Lies would often be more appropriate. If women's hemlines changed as rapidly as an economist's forecasts, the fashion people and the textile industry would be more profitable than any other. In fact, if all the country's economists were laid end to end, they still wouldn't reach a conclusion. ~ Malcolm Forbes

The key to making a good forecast is not in limiting yourself to quantitative information. ~ Nate Silver

I don't read economic forecasts. I don't read the funny papers. ~ Warren Buffett

The future is not to be forecast, but created. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

Make then your forecasts, my lords Astrologers, with your slavish physicians, by means of those astrolabes with which you seek to discern the fantastic nine moving spheres; in these you finally imprison your own minds, so that you appear to me but as parrots in a cage, while I watch you dancing up and down, turning and hopping within those circles. ~ Giordano Bruno

Trying to keep up with health advice can feel like surfing the Net for weather forecasts: what you find is always changing, often contradictory and rarely encouraging. ~ Julian Baggini

When you know absolutely nothing about the topic, make your forecast by asking a carefully selected probability sample of 300 others who don't know the answer either. ~ Edgar Fiedler

When all the experts and forecasts agree, something else is going to happen ~ Bob Farrell

Confidence in a forecast rises with the amount of information that goes into it. But the accuracy of the forecast stays the same. ~ Dean Williams

If we lived the plans we do more as bets than as forecasts, we would be less anxious and more prepared for the unexpected. ~ Luigina Sgarro

Saudi Arabian oil production is at or very near its peak sustainable volume (if it did not, in fact peak almost 25 years ago), and is likely to go into decline in the very foreseeable future. There is only a small probability that Saudi Arabia will ever deliver the quantities of petroleum that are assigned to it in all the major forecasts of world oil production and consumption. ~ Matthew Simmons

One of the soundest rules to remember when making forecasts in the field of economics is that whatever is to happen is happening already. ~ Sylvia Porter

If you spend more than 13 minutes analyzing economic and market forecasts, you've wasted 10 minutes ~ Peter Lynch

The puritanical potentialities of science have never been forecast. If it evolves a body of organized rites, and is established as a religion, hierarchically organized, things more than anything else will be done in the name of 'decency.' The coarse fumes of tobacco and liquors, the consequent tainting of the breath and staining of white fingers and teeth, which is so offensive to many women, will be the first things attended to. ~ Wyndham Lewis

We will continue to ignore political and economic forecasts, which are an expensive distraction for many investors and businessmen. Thirty years ago, no one could have foreseen the huge expansion of the Vietnam War, wage and price controls, two oil shocks, the resignation of a president, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a one-day drop in the Dow of 508 points, or treasury bill yields fluctuating between 2.8% and 17.4%. ~ Warren Buffett

It is not for us to forecast the future, but to shape it. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

DIAGNOSIS, n. A physician's forecast of disease by the patient's pulse and purse. ~ Ambrose Bierce

Enron followed the unwise practice of paying bonuses based on forecasted profits, not actual cash flows, a system that posed a problem remarkably similar to the R&D issues Gluck and his colleagues had solved at Northern Electric years earlier. In short: You can forecast anything. Delivering actual results is a different story. The emphasis on forecasts also neutralized Enron's so-called risk-management group, which became a shrinking violet in the face of ever more outrageous estimates. ~ Duff McDonald

The future is better dealt with using assumptions than forecasts. ~ Russell L. Ackoff

If you thought financial crises came and went, just count on them - another economic collapse, it's almost going to be like not news any more. But for startups this is great, because it's a perpetual driver of disruption. ~ Steve Jurvetson

The skies we slept under were too uncertain for forecasts. They came and went on the moody gusts of the Atlantic, bringing half a dozen weathers in an afternoon and playing all four movements of a wind symphony, allegro, andante, scherzo and adagio on the broken backs of white waves. ~ Niall Williams

As those who have seen Jurassic Park will know, this means a tiny disturbance in one place, can cause a major change in another. A butterfly flapping its wings can cause rain in Central Park, New York. The trouble is, it is not repeatable. The next time the butterfly flaps its wings, a host of other things will be different, which will also influence the weather. That is why weather forecasts are so unreliable. ~ Stephen Hawking

The recipe for success in business is this: increase profits and forecasts by reducing expenses through labor elimination and restructure. ~ John-Talmage Mathis

But no one can prepare for the worst. The worst doesn't only dash hopes; it tears through everything in ways that are almost meant to hurt, to punish, to shame. Despite my most sobering forecasts, life can still play the cruelest card and scuttle everything - and just when I thought we were sailing past the shoals. ~ Andre Aciman

It is my opinion that the 21st century will be the century of play, and the heteroglossic activity of artists in the 20th century has been the forecast. ~ Brian Sutton-Smith

Don't depend on recent or current figures to forecast future prices; remember that many others knew them before you did ~ Irving Kahn

SWIMMING IN THE RAIN
Swaddled and sleeved in water,
I dive to the rocky bottom and rise
as the first drops of sky
find the ocean. The waters above
meet the waters below,
the sweet and the salt,
and I'm swimming back to the beginning.
The forecasts were wrong.
Half the sky is dark
but it keeps changing. Half the stories
I used to believe are false. Thank God
I've got the good sense at last
not to come in out of the rain.
The waves open
to take in the rain, and sunlight
falls from the clouds
onto the face of the deep as it did
on the first day
before the dividing began. ~ Chana Bloch

Senator, my answer is that the independence and integrity of the Supreme Court requires that nominees before this committee for a position on that court not forecast, give predictions, give hints, about how they might rule in cases that might come before the Supreme Court,. ~ John Roberts

Hundreds of studies confirm that human forecasts are flawed and biased. Human decision making is not so great either. Again to take just one example, consider what is called the "status quo bias," a fancy name for inertia. For a host of reasons, which we shall explore, people have a strong tendency to go along with the status quo or default option. ~ Richard H. Thaler

Of course, economic forecasts must be revised when new information arrives and are thus necessarily provisional. ~ Ben Bernanke

Revolution can never be forecast; it cannot be foretold; it comes of itself. Revolution is brewing and is bound to flare up. ~ Vladimir Lenin

People who forecast simply because "that's my job," knowing pretty well that their forecast is ineffectual, are not what I would call ethical. What they do is no different from repeating lies simply because "it's my job." ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Happy will be the men who, having the power and the love and the benevolent forecast to [create a park], will do it. They will not be forgotten. The trees and their lovers will sing their praises, and generations yet unborn will rise up and call them blessed. ~ John Muir

I do think that, of all the silly, irritating tomfoolishness by which we are plagued, this "weather-forecast" fraud is about the most aggravating. It "forecasts" precisely what happened yesterday or a the day before, and precisely the opposite of what is going to happen to-day. ~ Jerome K. Jerome

Nobody, 20 years ago, forecast the Internet. ~ Bryan Appleyard

A forecast can be wrong, but not the weather. ~ Marty Rubin

Laughter on American television has taken the place of the chorus in Greek tragedy. It is unrelenting; the news, the stock-exchange reports, and the weather forecast are about the only things spared. ~ Jean Baudrillard

Heatstroke is an important and useful addition to the library on climate change, bringing insights from deep-time ecological research to help illuminate the dire forecasts of which we're already so aware. ~ David Quammen

Lenin, therefore, begins from the firm and definite principle that the State dies as soon as the socialization of the
means of production is achieved and the exploiting class has consequently been suppressed. Yet, in the same
pamphlet, he ends by justifying the preservation, even after the socialization of the means of production and, without
any predictable end, of the dictatorship of a revolutionary faction over the rest of the people. The pamphlet, which
makes continual reference to the experiences of the Commune, flatly contradicts the contemporary federalist and
anti-authoritarian ideas that produced the Commune; and it is equally opposed to the optimistic forecasts of Marx
and Engels. The reason for this is clear; Lenin had not forgotten that the Commune failed. As for the means of such
a surprising demonstration, they were even more simple: with each new difficulty encountered by the revolution, the
State as described by Marx is endowed with a supplementary prerogative. Ten pages farther on, without any kind of
transition, Lenin in effect affirms that power is necessary to crush the resistance of the exploiters "and also to direct
the great mass of the population, peasantry, lower middle classes, and semi-proletariat, in the management of the
socialist economy." The shift here is undeniable; the provisional State of Marx and Engels is charged with a new
mission, which risks prolonging its life indefinitely. Al ~ Albert Camus

Despite proclamations and forecasts to the contrary, neither the nation-state nor the international system of states is dead in the new millennium. What has changed are calculations of state interest and state navigation of the international system. Both have become much more complex, owing to the increased importance of such factors as crossnational actors and forces. ~ Brigid Starkey

One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them by chance, in a lucky hour, at the world's end somewhere, and holds fast to the days, as to fortune or fame. ~ Daniel M. Gilbert

The nature of the new world system was not so different from the old. It was for the moment more stable, but a reasonable forecast would be that Africa in particular had a century of border wars ahead of it. ~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan

School. I never tried to talk a student into coming to UCLA. I tried to show him what was there and what to expect, and I never told him he was going to play; I told him he would have the opportunity to play, and if he was good enough, then he'd be able to. Rosy forecasts during the "courtship" of a player can only lead to disappointment and distrust if anything fails to meet that student's expectations. ~ John Wooden