Quotes about prediction

These are quotes tagged with "prediction". You can also search for quotes containing the word prediction.

"Predictions of the future are never anything but projections of present automatic processes and procedures, that is, of occurrences that are likely to come to pass if men do not act and if nothing unexpected happens; every action, for better or worse, and every accident necessarily destroys the whole pattern in whose frame the prediction moves and where it finds its evidence."

Arendt, Hannah on prediction

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"No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time."

Baldwin, James on prediction

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"He who asks fortune-tellers the future unwittingly forfeits an inner intimation of coming events that is a thousand times more exact than anything they may say. He is impelled by inertia, rather than curiosity, and nothing is more unlike the submissive apathy with which he hears his fate revealed than the alert dexterity with which the man of courage lays hands on the future."

Benjamin, Walter on prediction

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"Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future."

Bohr, Niels on prediction

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"Legends of prediction are common throughout the whole Household of Man. Gods speak, spirits speak, computers speak. Oracular ambiguity or statistical probability provides loopholes, and discrepancies are expunged by Faith."

Guin, Ursula K. Le on prediction

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"The unpredictability inherent in human affairs is due largely to the fact that the by-products of a human process are more fateful than the product."

Hoffer, Eric on prediction