Quotes About Prediction

The doctor said, 'He can't last a week.' And I did. And they said, 'There's no way this kid's going to last a month.' And I did. And so they said, 'Two years. He's not going to make it.' Two years. 'Five years. He can't do that.' I lived to be five years. 'He's never going to hit double digits.' And here I am, a new teenager.

In the early nineties, I was a cub reporter on a city newspaper in Limerick, and assigned to the courthouse there. One day, an old detective sergeant came and whispered to me in the press pit. He pointed out a young offender, a teenager who was up for stealing a car or something relatively minor, and said, 'See this kid? He'll kill.'

No serious futurist deals in prediction. These are left for television oracles and newspaper astrologers.

'Profit' in my mind is as good as television gets, and if that didn't make it, all bets are off on really predicting what's going to work and what's not.

I've been involved in some movies that I really thought were going to take off that didn't. And then I've thought, 'This movie's not going anywhere,' and it worked. The same thing with television shows.

I'm a fortune teller, but I don't like to know my future.

I can't predict the future, nor will I. I'm not a fortune teller.

If I'm really telling someone what's coming ahead of them, then I'm going to say it, and I'm going to own those words.

The mistakes we make when we try to imagine our personal futures are also lawful, regular, and systematic. They, too, have a pattern that tells us about the powers and limits of foresight in much the same way that optical illusions tell us about the powers and limits of eyesight.

I feel it's the conscious mind that messes things up. The conscious mind is constantly telling you, this might happen or that might happen, even before it has happened. Your conscious mind tells you the next ball might be a out-swinger, but when it's coming at you you realize it's an in-swinger... so literally, you've played two balls.

Physics tells us observations can't be predicted absolutely. Rather, there's a range of possible observations each with a different probability.

My gut tells me that the Supreme Court will rule the subsidies to be illegal, and therefore, Obamacare will fail.

In our lifetime, we're going to see fifty percent of the world's species go extinct. We're already seeing this radical rise in the world's temperature that was predicted.

The point of the story is that even a highly disciplined investor can't see a market bottom any more easily than he can see the top.

Avance rápido. ¿No estaría escribiendo estas mismas palabras a 800 kilómetros al norte, dentro de doce años?

You can always spot a fool, for he is a man who will tell you he knows who is going to win an election.

Nothing dates faster than people's fantasies about the future.

Psychologist Susan Fiske observes, 'Attention is directed up the hierarchy. Secretaries know more about their bosses than vice versa; graduate students know more about their advisors than vice versa.' Fiske explains this happens because, like our fellow primates, 'people pay attention to those who control their outcomes. In an effort to predict and possibly influence what is going to happen to them, people gather information about those with power.

The possible answers were: 1 = de-energizing; 2 = no effect/neutral; or 3 = energizing. The colleagues in their team or business were then listed, and each was rated by every coworker. Rob and his fellow researchers were stunned by how strongly this "energy" question predicted performance evaluations and promotions, and whether people stayed with or left an organization.

there is little reason to believe that managers or other authorities will make more accurate predictions than anyone else about which new ideas will succeed and fail.

The skill of foresight is crucial. The "lead" that a leader has is his ability to foresee an event that must be dealt with before others see it so that he can act on it his way, the right way, while the initiative is his.

History was a crystal ball that told as much about the future as it did about the past.

In the end, every hypochondriac is his own prophet.

When it comes to predicting future conflicts, what kind of fights they will be, and what will be needed, we need a lot more humility.