Predictions Quotes

As long as scepticism is based on a sound understanding of science it is invaluable, for that is how science progresses. But poor criticism can lead those who are unfamiliar with the science involved into doubting everything about climate change predictions. ~ Tim Flannery

We're mortal, yet without a known expiration date. It's an inevitable fate worthy of acceptance, but not deserving of predictions. ~ Joe Peterson

In less than twenty-five years ... the motor-car will be obsolete, because the aeroplane will run along the ground as well as fly over it. ~ Philip Gibbs

Weather abroad
and weather in the heart alike come on
Regardless of prediction. ~ Adrienne Rich

If to enjoy even an enjoyable present we must have the assurance of a happy future, we are "crying for the moon." We have no such assurance. The best predictions are still matters of probability rather than certainty, and to the best of our knowledge every one of us is going to suffer and die. ~ Alan W. Watts

As you will have no doubt foreseen...

- Kelvin McKenzie, The Sun's editor; Preamble of the letter he sent to the paper's astrologer he was firing ~ Kelvin MacKenzie

Tetlock's words, even when their predictions prove ~ Steven D. Levitt

I make predictions about what I'm going to do before a fight, that makes me nervous because I've gotten so good at it until people really look for me to do it.If I say the man's going to fall in round five, like your man Henry Cooper here, he was stopped in round five but it was on a cut - it wasn't because he was out.But usually 'm on the spot with my predictions and some people really gamble and bet money on the rounds I say. ~ Muhammad Ali

But Amanda ... " Jadina said, looking past Maylin at the young Fate. "She doesn't ask for anything. She doesn't even try to read the future, it's just there. She ends up blurting things out. Starts talking about the car accident you're going to have in three years, or your baby boy dying in child birth in a few months, or your grandmother's funeral next year. Thing's you can't change even if you know about them. Things you're happier not knowing about. People go through life, happily oblivious. If you start telling them all the horrible things that are coming, they get upset. When those horrible things start coming true, they get scared and blame you. They say you caused it. Label you witch. Even burn you at the stake. She's safer in there. ~ Crissy Moss

My approach works not by making valid predictions but by allowing me to correct false ones. ~ George Soros

Damn you," said Arithon. In a shattering change of mood, he was laughing. "You have it. But what's my word against the grandiloquent predictions of a maudlin and drunken prophet?"
"Maybe everything," Felirin finished gently. "You're too young to live without dreams. ~ Janny Wurts

Science is about predictions based on predictable fact. Life is about surprises based on the unpredictable reality. ~ Ori Hofmekler

"I have not made any arrogant, confident, boasting predictions at all. On the contrary, I have stuck hard to my "blood, toil, tears and sweat," to which I have added muddle and mismanagement, and that, to some extend I must admit, is what you have got out of it." ~ Winston Churchill

I have yet to see a successful prediction about the physical world that was inferred or extrapolated from the content of any religions document. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

We are more fascinated today by statistical predictions of what the country will be thinking in a few weeks' time than by visionary predictions of what the country will look like in 10 or 20 years from now. ~ Peter Thiel

GCHQ has traveled a long and winding road. That road stretches from the wooden huts of Bletchley Park, past the domes and dishes of the Cold War, and on towards what some suggest will be the omniscient state of the Brave New World. As we look to the future, the docile and passive state described by Aldous Huxley in his Brave New World is perhaps more appropriate analogy than the strictly totalitarian predictions offered by George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Bizarrely, many British citizens are quite content in this new climate of hyper-surveillance, since its their own lifestyle choices that helped to create 'wired world' - or even wish for it, for as we have seen, the new torrents of data have been been a source of endless trouble for the overstretched secret agencies. As Ken Macdonald rightly points out, the real drives of our wired world have been private companies looking for growth, and private individuals in search of luxury and convenience at the click of a mouse. The sigint agencies have merely been handed the impossible task of making an interconnected society perfectly secure and risk-free, against the background of a globalized world that presents many unprecedented threats, and now has a few boundaries or borders to protect us. Who, then, is to blame for the rapid intensification of electronic surveillance? Instinctively, many might reply Osama bin Laden, or perhaps Pablo Escobar. Others might respond that governments have used these villains as a convenient ex ~ Richard J. Aldrich

Whenever you try to pick market tops and bottoms, you are making a prediction. Guessing what stock is going to outperform the market is forecasting, as is selling a stock for no apparent reason. Indeed, nearly all capital decisions made by most people are unconscious predictions. ~ Barry Ritholtz

I love the predictions of a man right before his first child is born," Flowers said. "They're like little snowflakes. Right before the sun comes blazing out the clouds and melts those happy dreams away. ~ Michael Chabon

We have three post-PC devices: the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad, the revolutionary device that defined a whole new categoryit's outstripping the wildest of predictions. ~ Tim Cook

The novel used to feed our search for meaning. Quoting Bill. It was the great secular transcendence. The Latin mass of language, character, occasional new truth. But our desperation has led us toward something larger and darker. So we turn to the news, which provides an unremitting mood of catastrophe. This is where we find emotional experience not available elsewhere. We don't need the novel. Quoting Bill. We don't even need catastrophes, necessarily. We only need the reports and predictions and warnings. ~ Don DeLillo

Correct Overestimated Feedback Fears

One of the reasons anxious people fear feedback is that they tend to judge their performance more harshly than others judge them. If you're feeling anxious, you'll probably overestimate the likelihood that any feedback you'll get will be negative - the negative predictions thinking error.
Let's say you need to get feedback on your delivery of an upcoming presentation. You fear that you'll get crucified, that people will say your presentation style is horrible and won't say anything nice. How likely does this feared outcome feel? You might say, "It feels 99% likely." How likely is it in reality? You think, "Objectively, maybe 50%?" Your answer of 50% may still be an overestimate, but at least it jump-starts the shift in your thinking. It alters you that your anxious feelings are, to some extent, clouding your perceptions.
Although it seems strange that people can shift their thinking just based on whether they are asked to think with their anxious mind or their objective mind, this isn't as far-fetched as it sounds. There's lots of research evidence that people's thinking changes based on how they're asked to think about something. For example, my own doctoral research asked people in relationships how their judgments of their romantic partner compared to reality. People recognized that they tended to view their partners more positively than warranted by reality.
Experiment: Think of a current area in your life wh ~ Alice Boyes

Reckless predictions of the second coming of Christ create an artificial excitement among believers followed by a corresponding depression. In addition, it hardens skeptics in their unbelief and provides new fodder for cynics to mock the Christian faith. ~ Doug Batchelor

If we {Federalists] must have an enemy at the head of government, let it be one whom we can oppose, and for whom we are not responsible, who will not involve our party in the disgrace of his foolish and bad measures. Under Adams as under Jefferson, the government shall sink. The party in the hands of whose chief it shall sink will sink with it - and the advantage will be all on the side of his adversaries. ~ Alexander Hamilton

The creative conquest of space will serve as a wonderful substitute for war. ~ James Smith McDonnell

Agnes was the worst prophet that's ever existed. Because she was always right. That's why the book never sold. ~ Neil Gaiman

Experimental confirmation of a prediction is merely a measurement. An experiment disproving a prediction is a discovery. ~ Enrico Fermi

The prediction that glaciers will be gone from Glacier National Park has been moved up by 10 years to 2020, the same year it's predicted the Arctic Sea will be ice-free in the summer. ~ Bill Kurtis

Al Gore is producing enough hot air to make his doomsday predictions about global warming a self-fulfilling prophecy. ~ Joseph Farah

If you knew how your day would end, would you still begin it? ~ N’ Zuri Za Austin

You can't make money with a consensus accurate prediction ~ Bill Gurley

Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature. ~ Albert Einstein

Understanding men or ideas or movements, or the outlooks of individuals or groups, is not reducible to a sociological classification into types of behaviour with predictions based on scientific experiment and carefully tabulated statistics of observations. ~ Isaiah Berlin

Except for some effects that I attribute mostly to age, my intuitive thinking is just as prone to overconfidence, extreme predictions, and the planning fallacy as it was before I made a study of these issues. ~ Daniel Kahneman

We'd had to find each other to finally understand that love could not be controlled. Predictions, assumptions, and absolutes were illusions. My love for him was volatile, uncontrollable, and overpowering, but ... that was love. Love was real. ~ Jamie McGuire

I don't like being called a denier because deniers don't believe in facts. There are no facts linking the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide with imminent catastrophic global warming there are only predictions based on complex computer models. ~ David Bellamy

Gadgetry will continue to relieve mankind of tedious jobs. Kitchen units will be devised that will prepare 'automeals,' heating water and converting it to coffee; toasting bread; frying, poaching or scrambling eggs, grilling bacon, and so on. Breakfasts will be 'ordered' the night before to be ready by a specified hour the next morning.
Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone. The screen can be used not only to see the people you call but also for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books. Synchronous satellites, hovering in space will make it possible for you to direct-dial any spot on earth, including the weather stations in Antarctica.
[M]en will continue to withdraw from nature in order to create an environment that will suit them better. By 2014, electroluminescent panels will be in common use. Ceilings and walls will glow softly, and in a variety of colors that will change at the touch of a push button.
Robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence.
The appliances of 2014 will have no electric cords, of course, for they will be powered by long- lived batteries running on radioisotopes.
"[H]ighways … in the more advanced sections of the world will have passed their peak in 2014; there will be increasing emphasis on transportation that makes the least possible contact with the surface. There will be aircraft, of course, but ev ~ Isaac Asimov

Self-critical thoughts and detrimental predictions about yourself have a huge impact on our mood/feelings. It affects our attitude, decisions and behavior. They ensure our self-esteem stays low and can create physical illnesses. ~ Maddy Malhotra

Predictions are preposterous. ~ Jackie Mason

As we explore these possibilities we
must remember that they are just that
- not predictions or prophecies. ~ Gerard O'Neill

Well, biology is not only about genes and environment, but also cells and the constraints of their physical structure, which we shall see have little to do with either genes or environment directly. The predictions that arise from these disparate world views are strikingly different. ~ Nick Lane

I've had only one idea in my life - a true idee fixe. To put it as bluntly as possible - the idea of having my own way. 'Control!' expresses it. The control of human behavior. In my early experimental days it was a frenzied, selfish desire to dominate. I remember the rage I used to feel when a prediction went awry. I could have shouted at the subjects of my experiments, 'Behave, damn you! Behave as you ought! ~ B.F. Skinner

I've actually made a prediction that within 30 years a majority of new cars made in the United States will be electric. And I don't mean hybrid, I mean fully electric. ~ Elon Musk

My life before the flood was manageable; during the flood it was chaos. The National Weather Service only reported river levels, and at times, crest predictions. It didn't report or predict everything else that could go wrong. ~ David J. Kirk

It is a consolation or a misfortune that the wrong kind of people are too often correct in their prognostications of the future; the far-seeing are also the foolish. ~ Robbie Ross

It is the ability to make predictions about the future that is the crux of intelligence. ~ Jeff Hawkins

Most fear comes from the anticipation of an event rather than the actual event itself. We worry beforehand as a form of preparation. We want to get ahead of our negative predictions. It's disguised as mental precaution when it's actually self-inflicted torment. The price of being ready for future suffering is that you suffer in the present moment. ~ Emily Maroutian

Essentially, the frequentist approach toward statistics seeks to wash its hands of the reason that predictions most often go wrong: human error. ~ Nate Silver

The only useful function of a statistician is to make predictions, and thus to provide a basis for action. ~ W. Edwards Deming

Never make bad predictions, especially about the futture. ~ Casey Stengel

Our sun enlightens the planets that belong to him; why may not every fixed star also have planets to which they give light? ~ Bernard Le Bovier De Fontenelle

The more interviews that an expert had done with the press, Tetlock found, the worse his predictions tended to be. ~ Nate Silver

We heard the United States had a new president, that she was arranging for a loan from the Commonwealth to bail us out. We heard the White House was burning and the National Guard was fighting the Secret Service in the streets of DC. We heard there was no water left in Los Angeles, that hordes of people were trying to walk north through the drought-ridden Central Valley. We heard that the county to the east of us still had electricity and that the Third World was rallying to send us support. And then we heard that China and Russia were at war and the US had been forgotten.

Although the Fundamentalists' predictions of Armageddon grew more intense, and everyone else complained with increasing bitterness about everything from the last of chewing gum to the closure of Redwood General Hospital, still, among most people there was an odd sense of buoyancy, a sort of surreptitious relief, the same feeling Eva and I used to have every few years when the river that flows through Redwood flooded, washing out roads and closing businesses for a day or two. We knew a flood was inconvenient and destructive At the same time we couldn't help but feel a peculiar sort of delight that something beyond us was large enough to destroy the inexorability of our routines. ~ Jean Hegland

Why is it that when Robert Redford-cum-Denys Finch Hatton flies away in the golden glow out of Africa, he is pursuing his destiny? And when I walk away I'm just a chick who's scared of commitment and on the run, who's weird for ignoring Glamour magazine's predictions of my eggs drying up? Learning is an underrated form of liberation. ~ Holly Morris

We have one real candidate for changing the rules; this is string theory. In string theory the one-dimensional trajectory of a particle in spacetime is replaced by a two-dimensional orbit of a string. Such strings can be of any size, but under ordinary circumstances they are quite tiny, ... a value determined by comparing the predictions of the theory for Newton's constant and the fine structure constant to experimental values. ~ Edward Witten

Most economists, like doctors, are reluctant to make predictions, and those who make them are seldom accurate. The economy, like the human body, is a highly complex system whose workings are not thoroughly understood. ~ Alice Rivlin

Social Security has been effective for 70 years; prior predictions of its demise have been totally overstated. ~ Grace Napolitano

My predictions are notably inaccurate. ~ Robert Caro

I figure lots of predictions is best. People will forget the ones I get wrong and marvel over the rest. ~ Alan Cox

The implications of our obstacle are theoretical
they exist in the past and the future. We live in the moment. And the more we embrace that, the easier the obstacle will be to face and move. You can take the trouble you're dealing with and use it as an opportunity to focus on the present moment. To ignore the totality of your situation and learn to be content with what happens, as it happens. To have no "way" that the future needs to be to confirm your predictions, because you didn't make any. To let each new moment be a refresh wiping clear what came before and what others were hoping would come next. ~ Ryan Holiday

Social conservatives do have a pretty decent predictive track record, including in many cases where their fears were dismissed as wild and apocalyptic, their projections as sky-is-falling nonsense, their theories of how society and human nature works as evidence-free fantasies. . . . If you look at the post-1960s trend data - whether it's on family structure and social capital, fertility and marriage rates, patterns of sexual behavior and their links to flourishing relationships, or just trends in marital contentment and personal happiness more generally - the basic social conservative analysis has turned out to have more predictive power than my rigorously empirical liberal friends are inclined to admit. . . .
In the late 1960s and early '70s, the pro-choice side of the abortion debate frequently predicted that legal abortion would reduce single parenthood and make marriages more stable, while the pro-life side made the allegedly-counterintuitive claim that it would have roughly the opposite effect; overall, it's fair to say that post-Roe trends were considerably kinder to Roe's critics than to the "every child a wanted child" conceit. Conservatives (and not only conservatives) also made various "dystopian" predictions about eugenics and the commodification of human life as reproductive science advanced in the '70s, while many liberals argued that these fears were overblown; today, from "selective reduction" to the culling of Down's Syndrome fetuses to worldwide tr ~ Ross Douthat

Music is no longer tasted it is swallowed. ~ Jules Verne

When Dirac was an old man, younger physicists often asked him how he felt when he discovered the [Dirac] equation. From his replies, it seems that he alternated between ecstasy and fear: although elated to have solved his problem so neatly, he worried that he would be the latest victim of the 'great tragedy of science' described in 1870 by Thomas Huxley; 'the slaying of a beautiful theory by an ugly fact'. Dirac later confessed that his dread of such an outcome was so intense that he was 'too scared' to use it to make detailed predictions of the energy levels of atomic hydrogen - a test that he knew it had to pass. He did an approximate version of the calculation and showed that there was acceptable agreement but did not go on to risk failure by subjecting his theory to a more rigorous examination. ~ Graham Farmelo

If the search is for examples that contradict the predictions of standard economic models, a good rule of thumb is to start in France. ~ Robert H. Frank

Predictions are just good guesses or stories for the gullible. ~ Wynne Channing

A nice blend of prediction and surprise seem to be at the heart of the best art. ~ Wendy Carlos

This fellow Charles Lindbergh will never make it. He's doomed. ~ Harry Frank Guggenheim

A piece of paper doesn't make you a pastor any more than making predictions makes you a prophet. ~ D.R. Silva

Left Behind takes what to some people may be unbelievable predictions from the Bible and shows how they might play out. It makes the events of biblical prophecy understandable and thus believable. ~ Jerry B. Jenkins

I believe, sir, in all the progress. Air navigation is the result of the oceanic navigation: from water the human has to pass in the air. Everywhere where creation will be breathable to him, the human will penetrate into the creation. Our only limit is life. ~ Victor Hugo

For a long time, I have been making many predictions, far in advance, of events since come to pass, naming the particular locality. I acknowledge all to have been accomplished through divine power and inspiration. ~ Nostradamus

Prediction is very hard, particularly when it's about the future. ~ Yogi Berra

All the scientist creates in a fact is the language in which he enunciates it. If he predicts a fact, he will employ this language, and for all those who can speak and understand it, his prediction is free from ambiguity. Moreover, this prediction once made, it evidently does not depend upon him whether it is fulfilled or not. ~ Henri Poincare

The brain is an organ that builds models and makes creative predictions, but its models and predictions can as easily be specious as valid. Our brains are always looking at patterns and making analogies. If correct correlations cannot be found, the brain is more than happy to accept false ones. Pseudoscience, bigotry, faith, and intolerance are often rooted in false analogy. ~ Jeff Hawkins

Trying to predict the future is a discouraging and hazardous occupation. If by some miracle a prophet could describe the future exactly as it was going to take place, his predictions would sound so absurd that people everyone would laugh him to scorn. The only thing we can be sure of about the future is that it will be absolutely fantastic. So, if what I say now seems to you to be very reasonable, then I will have failed completely. Only if what I tell you appears absolutely unbelievable have we any chance of visualizing the future as it really will happen, ~ Arthur C. Clarke

The contradictory remarks of politicians are forgotten; the more asinine predictions of pundits are buried with mercy. ~ Norman Mailer

I have discovered that a screw-shaped device such as this, if it is well made from starched linen, will rise in the air if turned quickly. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Science gains from it [the pendulum] more than one can expect. With its huge dimensions, the apparatus presents qualities that one would try in vain to communicate by constructing it on a small [scale], no matter how carefully. Already the regularity of its motion promises the most conclusive results. One collects numbers that, compared with the predictions of theory, permit one to appreciate how far the true pendulum approximates or differs from the abstract system called 'the simple pendulum'. ~ Jean Bernard Leon Foucault

Management is prediction. ~ W. Edwards Deming

No technique is possible when men are free ... Technique requires predictability and, no less, exactness of prediction. It is necessary, then, that technique prevail over the human being. ~ Jacques Ellul

If you learn one thing from having lived through decades of changing views, it is that all predictions are necessarily false. ~ M.H. Abrams

Apart from such considerations - which as predictions are of little avail and less consolation - there remains the fact that the crisis of our time and its central experience have brought forth an entirely new form of government which as a potentiality and an ever-present danger is only too likely to stay with us from now on, just as other forms of government which came about at different historical moments and rested on different fundamental experiences have stayed with mankind regardless of temporary defeats - monarchies, and republics, tyrannies, dictatorships and despotism. ~ Hannah Arendt

Inventions reached their limit long ago, and I see no hope for further development. ~ Frontinus

There is no hope for the fanciful idea of reaching the moon because of insurmountable barriers to escaping the earth's gravity ~ Forest Ray Moulton

When you treat a person right in the present they turn out better in the future. ~ Stacy Snapp-Killian Aka StacyK

These proven positive consequences of elevated CO2 are infinitely more important than the unsubstantiated predictions of apocalypse that are hypothesized to result from global warming, which itself, may not be occurring from rising atmospheric CO2 levels. The aerial fertilization effect of atmospheric CO2 enrichment is the only aspect of global environmental change about which we can be certain; and to restrict CO2 emissions is to assuredly deny the biosphere the many benefits that accrue from this phenomenon. ~ Keith E. Idso

I take no pleasure in the fact that the scientific predictions I've relayed to popular audiences turn out to be true. ~ Al Gore

Even after a lifetime of being near oracles, I found their predictions annoyingly vague. ~ Tammie Painter

If my fans think I can do everything I say I can do, then they're crazier than I am. After one of his fight predictions turned out to be wrong. ~ Muhammad Ali

But a major factor in the discontent of Americans came with the decree of April 6, 1830, when the Mexican government in essence banned further American immigration into Texas and tried to control slavery. (For an account of how Texans opposed this decree at Fort Anahuac, see Texas History Features on the Texas Almanac website.) Austin protested that the prohibition against American immigration would not stop the flow of Anglos into Texas; it would stop only stable, prosperous Americans from coming. Austin's predictions were fulfilled. Illegal immigrants continued to come. By 1836, the estimated number of people in Texas had reached 35,000. ~ Elizabeth Cruce Alvarez

Television won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night. ~ Darryl F. Zanuck

For Mother Nature, opinions and predictions don't count; surviving is what matters. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I pay for the privilege of handing over to trained professionals responsibility not just for my experience but for my interpretation of that experience - i.e. my pleasure. My pleasure is for 7 nights and 6.5 days wisely and efficiently managed ... just as promised in the cruise line's advertising - nay, just as somehow already accomplished in the ads, with their 2nd-person imperatives, which make them not promises but predictions. ~ David Foster Wallace

This explains so much," she said, clucking her tongue in mother-hen fashion. "You're compensating for this withered appendage."
Withered appendage? What the devil was she talking about? He shook his head, trying to clear it. Colin's dire predictions of shriveled twigs and dried currants rattled in his skull. Wide awake now, he fought to sit up, wrestling the sheets.
"Listen, you. I don't know what sort of liberties you've taken while I was insensible, or just what your spinster imagination prepared you to see. But I'll have you know, that water was damned cold."
She blinked at him. "I'm referring to your leg."
"Oh." His leg. That withered appendage ~ Tessa Dare

That's not a prediction, that's a spoiler. ~ Paul Heyman

When you heard anyone in the middle of a talk which was being deliberately kept off the Affair announce furtively some piece of political news, generally false but always devoutly to be wished, you could induce from the nature of his predictions where his heart lay. ~ Marcel Proust

There is no substantive basis for predictions of sizeable global warming due to observed increases in minor greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and chlorofluorocarbons. ~ Richard Lindzen

What does your birth date say about you? You are old! ~ Ljupka Cvetanova

What if all the 21.12.12 disaster predictions come true? ~ Mike Carter

You look at these past predictions like there's only a market in the world for five computers [as allegedly said by IBM founder Thomas Watson] and you realize it's not a good idea to predict too far into the future. ~ Geoffrey Hinton

One very important aspect of string theory is definitely testable. That was the prediction of supersymmetry, which emerged from string theory in the early '70s. ~ Edward Witten