Futurist Quotes

«"I meant, tell me all about this steampunk thing!" Gavin broke in. "How does that concept work out for you people, here in Brazil?"
"You don't know about steampunk?" shouted Xavier, dubiously.
"Well, I don't read many novels! Because I'm kinda fully-booked already! But, obviously, you're a science fiction writer at a Futurist conference! And I can see that you're all dressed up like some fancy guy from the past, from the 19th century! So what gives with that? What is all that about?"» ~ Bruce Sterling

You have to disentangle the details. You have to hold up every one independently, and ask, "How do we know *this* detail?" Someone sketches out a picture of humanity's descent into nanotechnological warfare, where China refuses to abide by an international control agreement, followed by an arms race ... Wait a minute - how do you know it will be China? Is that a crystal ball in your pocket or are you just happy to be a futurist? Where are all these details coming from?
Where did *that specific* detail come from? ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

I am a futurist, projecting trends in science into the next decades and century, but ironically my two daughters - one is a neuroscientist and the other is a pastry chef - tell me that my taste in music is positively prehistoric. ~ Michio Kaku

The sixteen people around you in a rolling motor bus are in turn and at the same time one, ten, four, three; they are motionless and they change places; they come and go, bound into the street, are suddenly swallowed up by the sunshine, then come back and sit before you, like persistent symbols of universal vibration. ~ Umberto Boccioni (Futurist Painting: Technical Manifesto)

Most of us who work as professional futurists never really stop gathering information - you never know when a provocative, potentially disruptive new development might appear. ~ Jamais Cascio

We have the technology to build a global paradise on earth, and at the same time, we have the power to end life as we know it. I am a futurist. I cannot predict the actual future - only what it can be if we manage the earth and its resources intelligently. ~ Jacque Fresco

I dream of instruments obedient to my thought and which with their contribution of a whole new world of unsuspected sounds, will lend themselves to the exigencies of my inner rhythm. ~ Edgard Varese

We're all in outer space, Jerry, and we're in color. NBC claims to be the first full- color network, so let's prove it for them. When you light the sets, throw wild colors in - magenta, red, green, any color you can find - especially behind the actors when they're in a close shot. Be dramatic. In fact, go overboard. Backlight the women and make them more beautiful. Take some chances. No one can tell you that's not the way the future will look. ~ Robert H. Justman

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind. ~ Winston S. Churchill

In the words of futurist Arthur C. Clarke, 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. ~ Dan Brown

It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

The Futurists? ... Well, of course, they are already past. ~ Ada Leverson

Use of paper has continued to soar. It is as though paper is taking its revenge on the futurists - not that any futurist has ever lost business because of a wrong prediction. ~ Edward Tenner

These months drive us to listen within. ~ Charol Messenger

This is actually a very important principle that science is learning about large systems like evolution and that futurists are learning about anticipating human society: just because a future scenario is plausible doesn't mean we can get there from here. ~ Kevin Kelly

I'm not a futurist. ~ Ray Bradbury

Futurists get to a certain age and, as one does, they suddenly recognize their own mortality. ~ William Gibson

While I talked about comparisons between Cap and Cable, there's also a parallel with Tony Stark. Iron Man thinks of himself as a 'futurist,' Cable is from the future. Both have been at war with their own bodies. We look for characters with touch points to Cable. Their legacy means an enormous amount to him. ~ Jeph Loeb

I don't like the word 'futurists.' I think we should be 'nowists.' ~ Joichi Ito

There are lots of futurists that spend their whole life trying to figure out who we're going to be in 40, 50, 60, 100 years. That's the great thing about science fiction. ~ Jodie Foster

Everyone complains that we can no longer intake huge chunks of text. I find that a reason to celebrate. It's something that has deep roots in modernism, stretching from the Futurists' use of typography to Pound's use of ideograms to concrete poetry. ~ Kenneth Goldsmith

I hardly see myself as a futurist. ~ Dick Wolf

The most exciting breakthrough of the twenty-first century will occur not because of technology, but because of an expanding concept of what it means to be human," said the futurist John Naisbitt. ~ Keith Ferrazzi

I never quite trust futurists because I think they're kind of telling us what they think our future should be. ~ Gloria Steinem

To be a futurist, in pursuit of improving reality, is not to have your face continually turned upstream, waiting for the future to come. To improve reality is to clearly see where you are, and then wonder how to make that better. ~ Warren Ellis

Science fiction is the great opportunity to speculate on what could happen. It does give me, as a futurist, scenarios. ~ Ray Kurzweil

O my brother Futurists ! All of you, look at yourselves! ... In the name of that Human Pride we so adore, I proclaim that the hour is nigh when men with broad temples and steel chins will give birth magnificently, with a single trust of their bulging will, to giants with flawless gestures. ~ Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

Music, which should pulsate with life, needs new means of expression, and science alone can infuse it with youthful vigor. ~ Edgard Varese

Many of these ideas you like - wouldn't they scare most people? Its all very Isaac Asimov. I've thought about how to implement this. Speaking for myself, I never want to go to the dentist, I never want to go to the various doctors. So if someone told me to implant something in my body, as a futurist, I'd be down, but as a citizen I would think it is annoying. ~ Anonymous

And what about ageing? Do men force the fear of ageing upon us
or are we ourselves terrified because we only know one kind of power
the power of youthful beauty?
Isn't it possible that if we became comfortable with other forms of female power, men might too? In her wonderful futurist novel, He, She, and It, Marge Piercy imagines a cyborg who is taught to love the bodies of older women. A delicious proposal
because it tells that whatever we may imagine can come true. Women often hate their own bodies. Sometimes I think that the most important things about having at least one relationship with someone of your own gender
especially if you are a woman
is to confront the female self-hatred and turn it into self-love. ~ Erica Jong

Pianists call me a composer, composers call me a pianist. The classicists think me a futurist, and the futurists call me a reactionary. ~ Anton Rubinstein

To the Young Artists of Italy! The cry of rebellion that we launch, linking our ideals with those of the Futurist poets, does not originate in an aesthetic clique. It expresses the violent desire that stirs in the veins of every creative artist today. ~ Umberto Boccioni

And when a futurist dies, the tragedy is that we lose access to all the possible futures they imagined for us. Our only connection, afterward, is through the arcane procedure like literary interpretation, like reading the flight of birds or throwing the I Ching, as Ballard must have as a child in Shanghai. Like it or not, we live in one of Ballard's futures; a little apocalyptic, bent by technology. ~ William Ball

It should also be born in mind that the research on 'movement' and the dynamic outlook on the world, which were the basis of Futurist theory, in no way required one to paint nothing but speeding cars or ballerinas in action; for a person who is seated, or an inanimate object, though apparently static, could be considered dynamically and suggest dynamic forms. I may mention as an example the 'Portrait of Madame S.' (1912) and the 'Seated Woman' (1914). ~ Gino Severini

You see, I'm also a futurist. I dream about the world 50, 100, maybe even 1,000 years in the future. But I also realize I'm probably not going to see it. However, I wouldn't mind having at least a copy of myself see the future, maybe 50, 100, 1,000 years into the future. It would be a fantastic ride. ~ Michio Kaku

I was an avid reader of futurists during the 1970s and '80s. They were so wrong - about everything. ~ Hermann E. Ott