As 2025 looms, it is tempting to offer a few predictions, but gazing into the future is best left to horoscope bods. Instead, here are a few quotes about the future and what it doesn’t tell us until it does.
Loss
He lived in the past, and was conscious every day that something in the past that he loved was dying and must vanish. No form of future civilisation, whatever it might be, which was gained by means implying the destruction of what he chiefly loved, could ever appeal to him.
Morley Roberts on George Gissing
Haunted
Did people realise that places were sometimes haunted by the future—as well as by the past? Did one...?
Haunted
Did people realise that places were sometimes haunted by the future—as well as by the past? Did one...?
Donald Henderson - Mr. Bowling Buys a Newspaper (1943)
Dreams and dogma
There is nothing like dogma for bringing forth dreams. And there is nothing like dreams for engendering the future.
Victor Hugo - Les Misérables (1862)
Seekers
Every career has its aspirants, who form a train for those who have attained eminence in it. There is no power which has not its dependents. There is no fortune which has not its court. The seekers of the future eddy around the splendid present. Every metropolis has its staff of officials.
Victor Hugo - Les Misérables (1862)
Elusive wisdom
This supercilious and impertinent exploration of the generation gone by, by the present generation, is nothing to our credit. As a matter of fact, no generation repeats the mistakes of the generation ahead, any more than any river repeats its course. So the young need not be so proud of their superiority over the old. The young generation glibly makes its own mistakes: and how detestable these new mistakes are, why, only the future will be able to tell us. But be sure they are quite as detestable, quite as full of lies and hypocrisy, as any of the mistakes of our parents. There is no such thing as absolute wisdom.
D.H. Lawrence - The Lost Girl (1920)
Mistakes
Wisdom has reference only to the past. The future remains for ever an infinite field for mistakes. You can’t know beforehand.
D.H. Lawrence - The Lost Girl (1920)
A perpetual pursuit
We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow's end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the future every real gift which is offered them in the Present.
C. S. Lewis - The Screwtape Letters (1942)
Dreams and dogma
There is nothing like dogma for bringing forth dreams. And there is nothing like dreams for engendering the future.
Victor Hugo - Les Misérables (1862)
Seekers
Every career has its aspirants, who form a train for those who have attained eminence in it. There is no power which has not its dependents. There is no fortune which has not its court. The seekers of the future eddy around the splendid present. Every metropolis has its staff of officials.
Victor Hugo - Les Misérables (1862)
Elusive wisdom
This supercilious and impertinent exploration of the generation gone by, by the present generation, is nothing to our credit. As a matter of fact, no generation repeats the mistakes of the generation ahead, any more than any river repeats its course. So the young need not be so proud of their superiority over the old. The young generation glibly makes its own mistakes: and how detestable these new mistakes are, why, only the future will be able to tell us. But be sure they are quite as detestable, quite as full of lies and hypocrisy, as any of the mistakes of our parents. There is no such thing as absolute wisdom.
D.H. Lawrence - The Lost Girl (1920)
Mistakes
Wisdom has reference only to the past. The future remains for ever an infinite field for mistakes. You can’t know beforehand.
D.H. Lawrence - The Lost Girl (1920)
A perpetual pursuit
We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow's end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the future every real gift which is offered them in the Present.
C. S. Lewis - The Screwtape Letters (1942)
4 comments:
Offering predictions of the future is now, more obviously, a mug's game. If you predict a bright and rosy future the miserabilists will condemn your words. If you predict a dull grey future the miserabilists will say you have not been miserable enough.
Which is probably why horoscope bods stick mainly to the unfolding lives of celebrities.
DJ - it is a mug's game. Starmer and co. may point towards a miserabilist future, but life goes on, celebrities are easily ignored and there are alternatives to miserabilist propaganda. Making fun of it is just one possibility.
We can't know in advance what the future will be, but we can know that the direction of travel is very concerning. It's possible that a cold future of material shortage and third world tribal politics would be lovely, but somehow I doubt it.
Sam - one direction of travel is that people with the ability to generate wealth and employment may leave, as some appear to be doing already.
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