Forecasts Quotes:

I find my past in my present, and from these forecast my future.

- Amos Bronson Alcott

topic: Future, Past, Forecasts

The future is not to be forecast, but created.

- Arthur C. Clarke

source: Arthur Charles Clarke, Ervin Laszlo (2011). “Macroshift: Navigating the Transformation to a Sustainable World (Large Print 16pt)”, p.5, ReadHowYouWant.com

topic: Forecasts

The future is better dealt with using assumptions than forecasts.

- Russell L. Ackoff

topic: Assumption, Forecasts

Never make forecasts, especially about future.

- Samuel Goldwyn

topic: Future, Forecasts

Precise forecasts masquerade as accurate ones.

- Nate Silver

source: Nate Silver (2012). “The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't”, p.39, Penguin

topic: Masquerade, Accurate, Forecasts, Precise

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.

- Lord Kelvin

topic: Science, Air, Flying, Famous Last Words, Crazy Ideas

The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?

- David Sarnoff

topic: Silly, Dumb, Pay, Crazy Ideas, Wireless

We have long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune-tellers look good.

- Warren Buffett

source: Warren Buffett (2009). “Warren Buffett on Business: Principles from the Sage of Omaha”, p.165, John Wiley & Sons

topic: Long, Looks, Investing, Market Timing, Fortune Teller

A Yale University management professor in response to student Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service: The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C', the idea must be feasible.

- Frederick W. Smith

topic: Ideas, Yale, Order, Crazy Ideas, Predicting

A good portfolio is more than a long list of good stocks and bonds. It is a balanced whole, providing the investor with protections and opportunities with respect to a wide range of contingencies.

- Harry Markowitz

topic: Opportunity, Long, Lists, Forecasts

Forecasts may tell you a great deal about the forecaster; they tell you nothing about the future.

- Warren Buffett

topic: May, Investing, Deals, Forecasts

Winston worked in the RECORDS DEPARTMENT (a single branch of the Ministry of Truth) editing and writing for The Times. He dictated into a machine called a Speakwrite. Winston would receive articles or news-items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, in Newspeak, rectify. If, for example, the Ministry of Plenty forecast a surplus, and in reality the result was grossly less, Winston's job was to change previous versions so the old version would agree with the new one.

- George Orwell

topic: Jobs, Writing, Reality, Items, Rectify

How poor is the wisdom of men, and how uncertain their forecast!

- Teresa of Avila

topic: Wisdom, Men, Poor, Forecasts

Revolution can never be forecast; it cannot be foretold; it comes of itself. Revolution is brewing and is bound to flare up.

- Vladimir Lenin

topic: Flare Up, Revolution, Brewing, Forecasts, Flare

When you know absolutely nothing about the topic, make your forecast by asking a carefully selected probability sample of 300 others who don't know the answer either.

- Edgar Fiedler

topic: Asking, Answers, Topics, Forecasts

Laughter on American television has taken the place of the chorus in Greek tragedy. In other countries, the business of laughing is left to the viewers. Here, their laughter is put on the screen, integrated into the show. It is the screen that is laughing and having a good time. You are simply left alone with your consternation.

- Jean Baudrillard

source: Jean Baudrillard (1989). “America”, p.49, Verso

topic: Country, Laughter, Taken, Stock Exchange, Consternation

If you have reason to think that yesterday's forecast went wrong, there is no glory in sticking to it.

- Nate Silver

topic: Thinking, Yesterday, Glory, Forecasts

Make then your forecasts, my lords Astrologers, with your slavish physicians, by means of those astrolabes with which you seek to discern the fantastic nine moving spheres; in these you finally imprison your own minds, so that you appear to me but as parrots in a cage, while I watch you dancing up and down, turning and hopping within those circles.

- Giordano Bruno

topic: Moving, Mean, Circles, Up And Down, Forecasts

Confidence in a forecast rises with the amount of information that goes into it. But the accuracy of the forecast stays the same.

- Dean Williams

topic: Investing, Information, Accuracy, Forecasts

We've long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune tellers look good. Even now, Charlie and I continue to believe that short-term market forecasts are poison and should be kept locked up in a safe place, away from children and also from grown-ups who behave in the market like children.

- Warren Buffett

source: Warren Buffett (2009). “Warren Buffett on Business: Principles from the Sage of Omaha”, p.165, John Wiley & Sons

topic: Children, Believe, Long, Market Timing, Fortune Teller

If you have to forecast, forecast often..

- Edgar Fiedler

topic: Business, Forecasts

People dont realize that we cannot forecast the future. What we can do is have probabilities of what causes what, but thats as far as we go. And Ive had a very successful career as a forecaster, starting in 1948 forward. The number of mistakes I have made are just awesome. There is no number large enough to account for that.

- Alan Greenspan

topic: Mistake, Successful, Careers, Successful Career, Forecasts

The affairs of this world are so shifting and depend on so many accidents, that it is hard to form any judgment concerning the future; nay, we see from experience that the forecasts even of the wise almost always turn out false.

- Francesco Guicciardini

source: Francesco Guicciardini (1890). “Counsels and Reflections of Francesco Guicciardini”

topic: Wise, World, Shifting, Forecasts

There are poems about the internet and about the shipping forecast but very few by women celebrating men.

- Germaine Greer

topic: Men, Shipping, Internet, Forecasts

Thick February mists cling heavily To the dead earth and to each leafless tree, And closer down upon the hilltops draw, Dull forecasts there of bright, sure-coming spring; Yet the heart gathers hope and strange delight From this dear, unlovely, wished-for sight Of leaden-misted twilights lengthening.

- Emma Lazarus

topic: Spring, Twilight, Heart, Forecasts

You realise Group Captain that this might be the most important weather forecast in history?

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

topic: Weather, History, Historical, Forecasts

William Tavener never heeded ominous forecasts in the domestic horizon, and he never looked for a storm until it broke.

- Willa Cather

source: Willa Cather (2014). “A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays”, p.42, Simon and Schuster

topic: Personality, Storm, Horizon, Ominous, Forecasts

Forecasts usually tell us more of the forecaster than of the forecast

- Warren Buffett

topic: Forecasts

Pundits forecast not because they know, but because they are asked.

- John Kenneth Galbraith

topic: Investing, Pundits, Knows, Forecasts

A commonplace of political rhetoric has it that the quality of a civilization may be measured by how it cares for its elderly. Just as surely, the future of a society may be forecast by how it cares for its young.

- Daniel Patrick Moynihan

topic: Elderly, Civilization, Political, Political Rhetoric, Forecasts

How thrilling to discover one had depths, how consoling to find them less polluted than the shallows, how encouraging to identify the enemy not as a fissure in the will but as a dead fetus in the specimen jar of the unconscious. My attention was being paternally led away from the excruciating present to the happy, healthy future that would be enabled by an analysis of the sick past, as though the priest had nothing to do but study old books and make bright forecasts, the present not worthy of notice.

- Edmund White

source: "A Boy's Own Story". Book by Edmund White, 1982.

topic: Book, Past, Sick, Old Books, Forecasts

We are not, of course, optimistic about our chances of success. Some form of ecocatastrophe, if not thermonuclear war, seems almost certain to overtake us before the end of the century. (The inability to forecast exactly which one - whether plague, famine, the poisoning of the oceans, drastic climatic change, or some disaster entirely unforeseen - is hardly grounds for complacency.)

- John Holdren

topic: War, Ocean, Optimistic, Forecasts, Drastic

You don't want to influence the same system you are trying to forecast.

- Nate Silver

topic: Trying, Want, Influence, Forecasts

Don't depend on recent or current figures to forecast future prices; remember that many others knew them before you did

- Irving Kahn

topic: Remember, Figures, Currents, Forecasts

The only way to predict if there's a cloud on your horizon due to glaucoma is to get tested. No matter what the diagnosis, the forecast is for clear vision in the years ahead.

- Willard Scott

topic: Years, Clouds, Vision, Forecasts, Clear Vision

Happy will be the men who, having the power and the love and the benevolent forecast to [create a park], will do it. They will not be forgotten. The trees and their lovers will sing their praises, and generations yet unborn will rise up and call them blessed.

- John Muir

source: John Muir (1988). “Northwest Passages - From the Pen of John Muir: In California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska”

topic: Blessed, Men, Tree, Forecasts

It is not for us to forecast the future, but to shape it.

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

topic: Shapes, Action, Taking Action, Forecasts

I'll admit that I'm not quite certain how to sum up an entire year in music anymore; not when music has become so temporal, so specific and personal, as if we each have our own weather system and what we listen to is our individual forecast.

- Carrie Brownstein

topic: Years, Weather, Individual, Forecasts

Heatstroke is an important and useful addition to the library on climate change, bringing insights from deep-time ecological research to help illuminate the dire forecasts of which we're already so aware.

- David Quammen

topic: Important, Library, Climate, Forecasts

You should expect little or nothing from Wall Street stock pickers who hope to be more accurate than the market in predicting the future of prices. And you should not expect much from pundits making long-term forecasts.

- Daniel Kahneman

topic: Wall, Long, Investing, Forecasts, Predicting The Future

I once read about a meeting of economists who agreed that if their forecasts were 33 1/3 % correct, that was considered a high mark in their profession. Well, of course, I know you cannot invest in securities successfully with odds like that against you if you place dependence solely upon judgement as to the right securities to own and the right time or price to buy them. Then, too, I read somewhere about the man who described an economist as resembling ‘a professor of anatomy who was still a virgin.’

- Gerald M. Loeb

topic: Men, Odds, He Man, Forecasts

Forecasts are difficult to make-particularly those about the future.

- Samuel Goldwyn

topic: Difficult, Forecasts

We ignore outlooks and forecasts... we're lousy at it and we admit it ... everyone else is lousy too, but most people won't admit it.

- Martin J. Whitman

topic: People, Investment, Outlook, Forecasts

Satellite photography in the 1970's gave rise to the long-range weather forecast, a month at a time. This in turn gave rise to the observation that the long-range weather forecast was wrong most of the time. In turn, this gave rise to the dropping of the long-range weather forecast and to the admission that really accurate forecasting could only cover the next day or two, and not always then.

- Miles Kington

topic: Photography, Weather, Two, Forecasting, Forecasts

The forecast today is love all around.

- R. Kelly

topic: Future, Today, Premonition, Forecasts

Even good excuses, really good ones, don't help very much. Explanations, on the other hand, are both scarce and useful. And accurate forecasts and insightful intuition are priceless.

- Seth Godin

topic: Hands, Insightful, Intuition, Forecasts

A different conception of society , very different from that which now prevails, is in process of formation. Under the name of Anarchy, a new interpretation of the past and present life of society arises, giving at the same time a forecast as regards its future, both conceived in the same spirit as the above-mentioned interpretation in natural sciences. Anarchy, therefore, appears as a constituent part of the new philosophy, and that is why Anarchists come in contact, on so many points, with the greatest thinkers and poets of the present day.

- Peter Kropotkin

topic: Philosophy, Past, Names, Natural Science, Constituents

The future will be less predictable, forecast rises will shrink, company lifetimes will shrink, new entrants will proliferate and it’s going to just get more unpredictable. If you thought financial crises came and went, just count on them – another economic collapse, it’s almost going to be like not news any more. But for startups this is great, because it’s a perpetual driver of disruption.

- Steve Jurvetson

topic: News, Financial, Lifetime, Economic Collapse, Forecasts

When all the experts and forecasts agree, something else is going to happen

- Bob Farrell

topic: Experts, Agree, Forecasts

Give me the character and I will forecast the event.

- Christian Nestell Bovee

topic: Character, Giving, Events, Forecasts

I have a small tattered clipping that I sometimes carry with meand pull out for purposes of privateamusement. It's a weather forecast from theWestern Daily Mail and it says, in toto: 'Outlook: Dry and warm, but cooler with some rain.

- Bill Bryson

source: 1995 Notes from a Small Island.

topic: Rain, Weather, Mail, Daily Mail, Forecasts

One of the soundest rules to remember when making forecasts in the field of economics is that whatever is to happen is happening already.

- Sylvia Porter

topic: Fields, Remember, Finance, Forecasts

It is my opinion that the 21st century will be the century of play, and the heteroglossic activity of artists in the 20th century has been the forecast.

- Brian Sutton-Smith

topic: Artist, Play, Opinion, 21st Century, Forecasts

My one remaining professional ambition is to read the shipping forecast. I live in hope.

- Samuel West

topic: Ambition, Shipping, Forecasts