Quotes About Prediction

Then you have people who say you can tell when rain is coming because the cows are lying down. Not so. According to my new friend at the Met Office, cows lie down because they are tired.

My guests never predicted nuclear boiling annihilation, otherwise they surely would have posed in more pretty-making fashions, chasing the ever-present ambition to be the most becoming of the dead.

The sun will rise tomorrow morning; I know that perfectly well. But figuring out how I could know it is, as Hume pointed out, a bit of a puzzle.

The way he's swinging the bat, he won't get a hit until the 20th century.

One always expects something else.

Contrary to the predictions of many students of international problems, I feel fairly certain that we shall not have war in the near future.

Some critics argued men should not try to predict the weather, because it was God's province; others that men could not predict the weather, because men were incompetent.

It is not given to human beings—happily for them, for otherwise life would be intolerable—to foresee or to predict to any large extent the unfolding course of events.—WINSTON CHURCHILL, EULOGY FOR NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN, NOVEMBER 12, 1940

Kennedy, in turn, was not well liked in London. The wife of Churchill's foreign secretary, Lord Halifax, detested the ambassador for his pessimism about Britain's chances for survival and his prediction that the RAF would quickly be crushed. She wrote, "I could have killed him with pleasure.

German U-boats were sinking ships at such a high rate that Admiralty officials secretly predicted Britain would be forced to capitulate by November 1, 1917. During the worst month, April, any ship leaving Britain had a one-in-four chance of being sunk. In

It is not given to human beings—happily for them, for otherwise life would be intolerable—to foresee or to predict to any large extent the unfolding course of events.

Not only this, but through television and telephone we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face." That word: television. In 1900.

Britain's civil defense experts, fearing a "knock-out blow," predicted that the first aerial attack on London would destroy much if not all of the city and kill two hundred thousand civilians. "It was widely believed that London would be reduced to rubble within minutes of war being declared," wrote one junior official.

You can bet on Franco, or Mussolini, or Hitler, if you want. But my money goes on Hipolito.

Make it all up. But make it up so truly that later it will happen that way. Ernest Hemingway

You know, sir, this operation is not, in any hands, a hundred percent predictable? Well, I'm an optimist. I didn't know there were any more such animals, said Dr. Courtland. Never think you've seen the last of anything

Now didn't I warn you, just a little while ago: arithmetic leads to philology, and philology leads to crime . . .

Neuroscientists say they can predict an action our mind has decided to take moments before our conscious mind has even decided what we think we're going to do. The function of consciousness, they argue, isn't to make decisions, but to rationalize them after the fact.

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, Out of My Later Years It has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws could be sustained under the existing legal framework if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger society. Civilized Sciences Foundation, CSF Congressional Report 1975

The Daily Express declares that Britain will not be involved in a European war this year, or next year either'.

In 1934, Churchill had predicted chaos when 'under the pressure of continuous attack upon London, three or four million people would be driven out into the open country around the metropolis'.3 In the event, three million people, the quarter of the city's population who were non-essential for the war effort, had already been calmly and safely evacuated all over the country, and there was no panic in the capital.

If he lasts a year, he'll go far.' Talleyrand on Napoleon's consulship

the qualities desirable in a politician, Churchill said, 'The ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year Ã¢â'¬â€œ and . . . to explain why it didn't happen.

Except for one last thing. What if the people who believe in the cheap Internet appliance turn out to be right?