When it comes to understanding the future, history is bunk (...) There is no place history is heading, except toward the maximum-entropy heat death of the universe.

I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past.

The more you observe life in relation to yourself the more you will see the fact that you are hardly ever correct when you think about something in the future. The future exists only in imagination; and that is why, no matter how hard you try to imagine it, you will not be able to predict the future with total certainty.

The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans. The present is our only reality.

You only ever get to feel certain about the future once it's already turned into the past.

Who really can face the future? All you can do is project from the past, even when the past shows that such projections are often wrong. And who really can forget the past? What else is there to know?

If you could not accept the past and its burden, there was no future, for without one there cannot be the other, and [...] if you could accept the past you might hope for the future, for only out of the past can you make the future.

God alone knows the future, but only an historian can alter the past.

You know the past only in the present and as part of the present.

No people can live in the past - not even in its own past. But if it no longer has a link with its history, it must of necessity perish. Persia, crowded with hardship and glory, ordeals and hopes. With the help of the Almighty, the lessons of the past constitute the best guide for the citizens of the future.

Think of tomorrow, the past can't be mended.

The past is a source of knowledge, and the future is a source of hope. Love of the past implies faith in the future.

You cannot predict the future.

When the past dies, there is mourning, but when the future dies our imaginations are compelled to carry it on.