Quotes About Prediction

It does not pay a prophet to be too specific." —L. Sprague de Camp

How can I be sure? I'm a doctor, not a fortune-teller.

SYNERGY: those behaviors of whole systems which cannot be predicted by analysis of parts or sub-systems. A term popularized by Buckminster Fuller and roughly equivalent to Holism. Cf. Gestalt in psychology and transaction immediately following:

The information in a message equals the negative of the probabilities that you can predict what will come next every step of the way. The easier you can predict a message, the less information the message contains.

Norbert Weiner once simplified the meaning of this equation by saying that great poetry contains more information than political speeches. You never know what will come next in a truly creative poem, but in a George Bush speech you not only know what will come next, you probably could predict the whole speech, in general, before he even opens his mouth.

We do much better," she said, "explaining why people did things than we do at predicting what they will do.

You know that you can't predict and you can't expect that you should have predicted. You do the best you can, as decently as you can, and you accept the consequences.

There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing.

both Neptune and Pluto were predicted long before they had ever been seen because of peculiarities in the orbits of the other outer planets. It made me think that planets weren't so very different from people. Seeing what happened around them was enough to tell you where they were and what they were.

According to Mackinder, Europe and the Middle East are much more affected by the Heartland than India and China, whose hundreds of millions of people are self-contained and thus able to peacefully develop. This leads him to predict that the future lies to a large extent in the "Monsoon lands of India and China."38

that until you know for sure what the outcomes of a decision will be, you can't decide what to do.

cuando un cálculo confirma las propias expectativas, uno simplemente se reafirma un poco en su comprensión intuitiva de las leyes de la física. Pero cuando un cálculo contradice las expectativas, uno está en el camino hacia una nueva intuición.

You can tell? You always had trouble reading him." Nod. "Three months' practice." "But you can't read his future?" Matthew's brows drew together. "Never wanted this to happen." "Can you tell him we're coming for him?

With a roll of her eyes, Regin said, "Oh, yeah, like the soothsayer doesn't already have your number." Nïx winked at her.

The soothsayer shrugged, flustering her bat. "Some details are above your feygrade.

Recently, he'd consulted the soothsayer Nïx about his future. She'd replied with a grin, "It's a doozy.

With reflexes that were more like precognition, Han threw everything he had into an equally frantic bank.

The difference between hearsay and prophecy is often one of sequence. Hearsay often turns out to have been prophecy.

If any religion had a chance of ruling over England, nay Europe within the next hundred years, it could be Islam.

Prophesying is lying professionally.

The New Testament, they tell us, is founded upon the prophecies of the Old; if so, it must follow the fate of its foundation.

I can't predict the future and I don't have respect for people who try to.

The art of prophecy is very difficult, especially with respect to the future.

Personally, I do not believe that we shall have greater armaments in the future than we have had in the past. On the contrary, I believe there will be a gradual diminution in this respect.