The future ain't what it used to be.

-Anonymous
  Anonymous Iowa farmer quoted by President Bush on NBC  T V,10 May.

The future's bright, the future's Orange.

-Anonymous
  Advertising slogan for Orange telecommunications.

I want a future that will live up to my past.

-Bennett, Alan
  Spoken by Maggie Smith as  Joyce Chilvers in  A Private Function.

Future, n.That periodoftimeinwhichouraffairsprosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.

-Bierce, Ambrose Gwinett
  The Cynic's Word Book. Retitled  The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

Hear the voice of the Bard! Who present, past and future sees.

-Blake,William
  Songs of Experience,'Introduction'.

   To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind.

-Burke, Edmund
  Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents.

Seldom can the unhappy be persuaded that the evil of the day is sufficient for it; and the ambitious will not be content with the present splendour, but paints yet more glorious triumphs, on the cloud curtain of the future.

-Carlyle,Thomas
  Signs of the Times.

He was a man with a great future behind him, already.

-Carter, Angela Olive
Wise Children, ch.3.

The past was nothing to her† The future was a mystery which she never attempted to penetrate. The present alone was significant.

-Chopin, Kate (Katherine) ne¤  e  O'Flaherty
  The Awakening, ch.15.

STRANGELOVE REPRODUCTION: Having children to make up for the fact that one no longer believes in the future.

-Coupland, Douglas
Generation X,'Define Normal'.

To fight for the right, to abhor the imperfect, the unjust, or the mean, to swerve neither to the right hand nor the left, to care nothing for flattery or applause or odium or abuseöit is so easy to have any of them in Indiaönever to let your enthusiasm be soured or your courage grow dim but to remember that the Almighty has placed your hand on the greatest of his ploughs, in whose furrow the nations of the future are germinating and taking shape, to drive the blade a little forward in your time and to feel that somewhere among those millions you have left, a little justice, or happiness or prosperity, a sense of manliness or moral dignity, a springof patriotism, a dawn of intellectual enlightenmentora stirringofduty whereit did not exist beforeöthat is enough, that is the Englishman's justification in India.

-Curzon (of Kedleston), Lord George Nathaniel
  Farewell speech on departing from Bombay as Viceroy of India.

What's the aim of the school of business, for example? They teach students how business is conducted today and how to perpetuate it. Any wonder we're in trouble? They ought to be preparing students for the future, not for the past.

-Deming,W(illiam) Edwards
  Interview in the Wall Street  Journal, 4  Jun.

Par toi tout le bonheur que m'offre l'avenir Est dans mon souvenir. Through you, all the happiness that the future offers Is in my memory.

-Desbordes-Valmore, Marceline
  EŁ   legies, Marie et romances,'Le Souvenir'.

Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.

-Disraeli, Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
  Coningsby, bk.2, ch.5.

Let us draw an arrow arbitrarily. If as we follow the arrow we find more and more of the random element in the world, then the arrow is pointing towards the future; if therandomelement decreasesthearrow pointstowards the past† I shall usethe phrase'time's arrow'to express this one-way property of time which has no analogue in space.

-Eddington, SirArthur Stanley
  The Nature of the Physical World, ch.4. Martin  Amis used the phrase'Time's  Arrow' for the title of his1991novel.

Forasmuch as there isgreat noise in the city caused by hustling over large balls, from which many evils may arise, which God forbid, we command and forbid on behalf of the King, on pain of imprisonment, such game to be used in the city in future.

-Edward II
  Royal proclamation, banning football from the streets of London.

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.

-Eisenhower, Dwight D(avid)
  In Time, 6 Oct.

Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past.

-Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)
  Four Quartets,'Burnt Norton', pt.1.

And right action is freedom From past and future also.

-Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)
Four Quartets,'The Dry Salvages', pt.5.

Here the impossible union Of spheres of existence is actual, Here the past and future Are conquered, and reconciled.

-Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)
Four Quartets,'The Dry Salvages', pt.5.