Quotes on Predicting

The consequences of our actions are always so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed.

As it turns out, the scientific community has been addressing this particular question for some time now and they say that increased heavy snowfalls are completely consistent with what they have been predicting as a consequence of man-made global warming.

You don't get points for predicting rain. You get points for building arks.

My mother is not a model. She is not perfect. That awareness is part of learning to love someone. Predicting the actions of someone is an act of love. We persist, even when we get it wrong. That's the beauty of love.

If you want a simple model for predicting the unemployment rate in the United States over the next few years, here it is: It will be what Greenspan wants it to be, plus or minus a random error reflecting the fact that he is not quite God.

A serious prophet upon predicting a flood should be the first man to climb a tree. This would demonstrate that he was indeed a seer.

The merit of Marx is that he suddenly produces a qualitative change in the history of social thought. He interprets history, understands its dynamic, predicts the future, but in addition to predicting it (which would satisfy his scientific obligation), he expresses a revolutionary concept: the world must not only be interpreted, it must be transformed. Man ceases to be the slave and tool of his environment and converts himself into the architect of his own destiny.

The track record of economists in predicting events is monstrously bad. It is beyond simplification; it is like medieval medicine.

It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset.

I won't say 'See you tomorrow' because that would be like predicting the future, and I'm pretty sure I can't do that.

Those who have knowledge, don't predict. Those who predict, don't have knowledge.

It will be possible in a few more years to build radio controlled rockets which can be steered into such orbits beyond the limits of the atmosphere and left to broadcast scientific information back to the Earth. A little later, manned rockets will be able to make similar flights with sufficient excess power to break the orbit and return to Earth. (1945) [Predicting communications satellites.]

To understand the difficulty of predicting the next 100 years, we have to appreciate the difficulty that the people of 1900 had in predicting the world of 2000.

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.