“Who knows what the day after tomorrow will bring—the very thing we most wanted and haven’t allowed our hearts to hope.”

William Maxwell

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“Digging, raking, hoeing. Pruning a shaggy rose: shaping for future splendour. Dividing fat clumps of snowdrops: out of many shall come more still. And that was—is—the miraculous power of gardening: it evokes tomorrow, it is eternally forward-looking, it invites plans and ambitions, creativity, expectation. Next year I will try celeriac. And that new pale blue sweet pea. Would Iris stylosa do just here? Gardening defies time; you labour today in the interests of tomorrow; you think in seasons to come, cutting down the border this autumn but with next spring in your mind’s eye.”

Penelope Lively

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“Be of good hope. Try to think in terms of ‘the long run’ and store up your honey like the bees.”

May Sarton

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“My first impulse, when presented with any spanking-new piece of computer hardware, is to imagine how it will look in 10 years’ time, gathering dust under a card table in a thrift shop.”

William Gibson

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“When I was a child, people used to talk about what would happen by the year 02000. For the next thirty years they kept talking about what would happen by the year 02000, and now no one mentions a future date at all. The future has been shrinking by one year per year for my entire life. I think it is time for us to start a long-term project that gets people thinking past the mental barrier of an ever-shortening future. I would like to propose a large (think Stonehenge) mechanical clock, powered by seasonal temperature changes. It ticks once a year, bongs once a century, and the cuckoo comes out every millennium.”

Daniel Hillis

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“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language / And next year’s words await another voice.”

T. S. Eliot

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Douglas Rushkoff

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“What I’m really interested in is not what I’ve written but what I haven’t written, the next poem, if there is one.”

W. S. Merwin

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“America is now on the unlit, unpaved road to nowhere.”

Paul Krugman

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“A little more patience, a little more charity for all, a little more devotion, a little more love; with less bowing down to the past, and a silent ignoring of pretended authority; brave looking forward to the future with more faith in our fellows, and the race will be ripe for a great burst of light and life.”

Elbert Hubbard

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“The future…seems to me no unified dream but a mince pie, long in the baking, never quite done.”

E. B. White

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“The way to know the shape of things in advance is to listen to seers and mystics instead of to economists and tacticians. The world had ample warning of every event which it has greeted with such gasps of surprise in the past twelve months. Part of the preparation for the perfect world society will be the recognition of seers. It will be required for the President of the United States that he read one poem and one parable or fable a day, in addition to the editorials in the Times.”

E. B. White

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“In the age of Google, when everything you say is forever searchable, the future belongs to those who leave no footprints.”

Thomas L. Friedman

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“It amazes me that most people spend more time planning next summer’s vacation than they do planning the rest of their lives.”

Patricia Fripp

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“If you want to make the right decision for the future, fear is not a very good consultant.”

Markus Dohle

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