Quotes About Speculation

The rumor is not true: I am allowed in the state of Texas.

If you're writing fantasy or science fiction, it's really hard to do if you don't know a lot, at least in a basic way, about how the real world works.

Science fiction is about things that plausibly might happen. Grounding my work in the real world helps make that clear.

When I write, I am not giving a lecture, I am speculating on behavior. Sometimes this is dangerous, but it should be. As I say often, theatre is a dark place and we should keep the light out of it.

I think that prog rock is the science fiction of music. Science fiction speculates on what the future might be and look like and how we'll get there, and yet there's always a central theme of humanity, or there should be. Progressive rock has the same concept of exploration into the parts of the music world that hasn't been explored.

All of the Flying Lotus records are exploring similar themes: These questions in my mind about what's next and what's beyond.

The future is like the moon. You never expect to go there, or think about what it might be like.

The book is worth reading, in part because it is enjoyable to read of other people's folly, not to mention their avarice and stupidity." -- Roger Lowenstein, reviewing "Devil Take the Hindmost: a History of Financial Speculation", WSJ 6-1-99

Die letzte Epoche der Utopie hat begonnen, und wie alle Ressourcen wird auch die Zukunft knapp. Am Ende aller Berechnungen ist sie eben keine gänzlich unbekannte mehr. Was kommt, kommt dann nicht als Utopie, sondern als Spekulationsobjekt der Realpolitik, und da die wahren Paradiese ohnehin jene sind, die wir verloren haben, stellen sich viele diese ideale Zukunft schon vor als die Wiederkehr des Vergangenen oder schlicht als Erlösung. So gesehen hat die alte Zukunft keine Zukunft.

Philosophers used to speculate about what they called the meaning of life. (That is now the job of mystics and comedians.)

I will ask you again. Are you mad? Well, that is the rumor, isn't it?

Science and industry, and their progress, might turn out to be the most enduring thing in the modern world. Perhaps any speculation about a coming collapse of science and industry is, for the present and for a long time to come, nothing but a dream; perhaps science and industry, having caused infinite misery in the process, will unite the world - I mean condense it into a single unit, though one in which peace is the last thing that will find a home.

One of the problems of being a storyteller is the cultivated ability to extrapolate; in every situation all the what ifs come to me.

Louise thinks the bad flu strain this autumn, which has caused a lot of deaths, may not be flu at all, but mitochondritis.

Further, the devices being implanted now are different from the ones used even a decade ago. This means that all decisions about how early to implant children are based on speculation rather than experience.

As it was a small town and a bored town and a hopeful town, kids talked and rumors started.

Jessica Ramsey sat next to me, a mystery. I kept looking at her long legs. Maybe she was a dancer or a gymnast or something. Of course, I looked at her face too. Jessica's eyes were huge and dark. Her lashes were so long I wondered if they were fake. Probably not, if her mother was anything like mine, and I decided that was a distinct possibility since Jessica wore glasses and didn't have pierced ears either.

Jonah's eyes widen. "Do you think she'd eat our lungs and livers, too?" Snow nods. "She might." "Do you think she'd use ketchup? I bet they'd be pretty gross without ketchup.

Where Annie came from, one assumed the worst and worked backwards from there.

Un tipo que especula es como un animal en una llanura yerma al que un genio maligno le hace dar vueltas en círculos mientras, a su alrededor, hay bellos prados verdes.

Le gaillard qui se perd en spéculation Est comme un animal qui tourne sur la lande En cercles infinis, poussé par le démon, Quand partout alentour croît la verte provende.

I believe the calculation of the quantity of probability might be improved to a very useful and pleasant speculation, and applied to a great many events which are accidental, besides those of games; only these cases would be infinitely more confused, as depending on chances which the most part of men are ignorant of.

we may see another speculative buildup followed by another crash, and so on until God makes people less greedy.

the way stock prices are made, the silly and almost childlike basis upon which grown men decide that a stock should be bought, and at what price