Quotes About Prediction

It's one thing to predict [the complete breakdown of civilization]. It's something else again to be right in the middle of it. It's a very humbling thing...for an academic like me to find his abstract theories turning into concrete reality... It was all just so many words to me, really, just a philosophical exercise, completely abstract.

A mathematician, however, who could back his prophecy with mathematical formulas and terminology, might be understood by no one and yet believed by everyone.

La psicohistoria no trataba del hombre, sino de las masas de hombres. Era la ciencia de las muchedumbres, de miles de millones de personas. Podía prever las reacciones a diferentes estímulos con la misma exactitud que una ciencia menor predecía el rebote de una bola de billar. La reacción de un hombre se podía vaticinar por medio de las matemáticas conocidas, pero la de mil millones era algo distinto

commonly known as simply "The Foundation

The reaction of one man could be forecast by no known mathematics; the reaction of a billion is something else again.

You're coming to work for him, aren't you?" "Well yes, I'm a mathematician. Why does he predict disaster? What kind of disaster?" "What kind would you think?" "I'm afraid I wouldn't have the least idea. I've read the papers Dr. Seldon and his group have published. They're on mathematical theory." "Yes, the ones they publish." Gaal

You must not say 'never.' That is a lazy slurring-over of the facts. Actually, Psychohistory predicts only probabilities. A particular event may be infinitesimally probable, but the probability is always greater than zero.

Excellence, we have. Yet Seldon's science is known—only to Seldon. We ourselves have but faith.

Psychohistory, which can predict the fall, can make statements concerning the succeeding dark ages. The Empire, gentlemen, as has just been said, has stood twelve thousand years. The dark ages to come will endure not twelve, but thirty thousand years. A Second Empire will rise, but between it and our civilization will be one thousand generations of suffering humanity. We must fight that.

No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.

Kafka believed in the golem, and even that the future might well bring another one.

He had a presentiment that their fates would be intertwined, but immediately rejected it; he always tried to avoid falling into the traps of intuition.

La gitana sólo me auguró una larga vida, lo que siempre dicen por una moneda.

Fifty years from now, people will still be listening to Led Zeppelin. They won't even remember me.

I was making projections about 'Humans of New York,' back when I had zero followers, that made all my friends and family roll their eyes. I'd throw out these huge numbers: 'One day, a million people are gonna be looking at this. Trust me.' And even those wild, wild numbers I was throwing out have just been smashed. So, it's a good feeling.

Zero is the number of minutes people predicted I would play my freshman year at Arizona.

Had there been a computer a hundred years ago, it would probably have predicted that by now there would be so many horse-drawn vehicles it would be impossible to clear up all the manure.

Human foresight often leaves its proudest possessor only a choice of evils.

You can only predict things after they've happened.

The future is no more uncertain than the present.

Nobody can really guarantee the future. The best we can do is size up the chances, calculate the risks involved, estimate our ability to deal with them and make our plans with confidence.

To swallow gudgeons ere they're catch'd And count their chickens ere they're hatch'd.

Forethought we may have, undoubtedly, but not foresight.

The historian is a prophet looking backwards.