Quotes About Prediction

A prediction is but an explanation in advance.

What can be explained can also be predicted, if one knows the initial events and the laws covering their succession.

My gran'ther's rule was safer 'n 'tis to crow:Don't never prophesy—onless ye know.

Soothsayer's warning to Antony in Antony and Cleopatra, "If thou dost play with him at any game, / Thou art sure to lose" (2.3.26–27)

Jensen dwelled on thoughts of what the future would bring and he didn't like what he saw there.

Any astronomer can predict with absolute accuracy just where every star in the universe will be at 11.30 tonight. He can make no such prediction about his teenage daughter.

I HAVE NO DOUBT that Lincoln will be the conspicuous figure of the war," predicted Ulysses S. Grant. "He was incontestably the greatest man I ever knew.

There will be some one at the White House whom you will like more than me," Roosevelt had predicted during his final meeting with the press corps, "but not one who will interest you more.

Roosevelt had predicted during his final meeting with the press corps, "but not one who will interest you more.

I write all these remarks with exactly the same feeling as if I were writing a letter to post into the distant past: I am so sure that everything we now take for granted is going to be utterly swept away in the next decade. (So why write novels? Indeed, why! I suppose we have to go on living as if ...)

Where there had been peace, now there was endurance. "He will awake," said Nostradamus. "You took a great risk, but he will awake, if that is what you want for him.

If you wish to carry this paper from France and deliver it into Lord Culter's hands,' he said, 'I know of no power which would stop you, unless an earthly one.' 'And that,' said Daniel Hislop, 'is the first totally accurate prediction I have ever had the pleasure of listening to. Give me that.

My part in the prophecy is fulfilled. Yours has still to come. Whatever made you think you were free?

He knew what would happen. He has laid wagers with himself, I imagine, for days: how many hours, how many miles towards safety before he has to drop out.

Archie shrugged. 'All I know is what's going to happen.' Philippa said, 'What should I do?' And Archie said, 'Break him.

There he goes. What do you think he will do?' 'What you want him to do,' Adam said dryly. 'Doesn't he always?' 'No,' Lymond said.

One of these days you'll go too far, and somebody will murder you.' 'I shouldn't be in the least surprised,' said Lord Peter, pleasantly.

I really didn't foresee the Internet. But then, neither did the computer industry. Not that that tells us very much of course--the computer industry didn't even foresee that the century was going to end.

Trying to predict the future is a mug's game. But increasingly it's a game we all have to play because the world is changing so fast and we need to have some sort of idea of what the future's actually going to be like because we are going to have to live there, probably next week.

Predicting the future is a mug's game, but any game is improved when you can actually keep the score.

What's that, forgone conclusion then you reckon, sir?' said the barman. 'Arsenal without a chance?' 'No, no,' said Ford, 'it's just that the world's about to end.

The expected has happened, and when the expected happens, it always causes me emotion.

But after a while they stopped talking about her and discussed instead who was going to win the Grand National. For, as Mr Ferguson was saying at that minute in Luxor, it is not the past that matters but the future.

No, doctor, I'm going to London. If things happen anywhere, they happen in London.