For in the end, freedom is a personal and lonely battle; and one faces down fears of today so that those of tomorrow might be engaged.

- Alice Walker

Do not look back on happiness or dream of it in the future. You are only sure of today; do not let yourself be cheated out of it.

- Henry Ward Beecher

Leadership is about creating, day by day, a domain in which we and those around us continually deepen our understanding of reality and are able to participate in shaping the future. This, then, is the deeper territory of leadership -- collectively "listening to what is wanting to emerge in the world, and then having the courage to do what is required."

- Joseph Jaworski

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.

- Buddha

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something -- your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

- Steve Jobs

In the landscape of time, there are few locations less comfortable than that of one who waits for some person or event to arrive at some unknown moment in the future.

- Robert Grudin

Long range planning does not deal with future decisions, but with the future of present decisions.

- Peter F. Drucker

To the highest leadership among women it is given to hold steadily in one hand the sacred vessels that hold the ancient sanctities of life, and in the other a flaming torch to light the way for oncoming generations.

- Anna Garlin Spencer

Let go of the past and go for the future. Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you imagined.

- Henry David Thoreau

Objectives are not fate; they are direction. They are not commands; they are commitments. They do not determine the future; they are means to mobilize the resources and energies of the business for the making of the future.

- Peter Drucker

I have never been able to grasp the meaning of time. I don't believe it exists. I've felt this again and again, when alone and out in nature. On such occasions, time does not exist. Nor does the future exist.

- Thor Heyerdahl

For these are all our children. We will all profit by, or pay for, whatever they become,

- James Baldwin

A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.

- Sydney J. Harris

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

- Howard Zinn

Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future, making it predictable and reliable to the extent that this is humanly possible.

- Hannah Arendt

I like dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

- Thomas Jefferson



Every man's life lies within the present; for the past is spent and done with, and the future is uncertain.

- Marcus Aurelius



Everything is material for the seed of happiness, if you look into it with inquisitiveness and curiosity. The future is completely open, and we are writing it moment to moment. There always is the potential to create an environment of blame -- or one that is conducive to loving-kindness.

- Pema Chodron



To the wrongs that need resistance,
To the right that needs assistance,
To the future in the distance,
Give yourselves.

- Carrie Chapman Catt



How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because some day in life you will have been all of these.

- George Washington Carver



The critical responsibility for the generation you're in is to help provide the shoulders, the direction, and the support for those generations who come behind.

- Gloria Dean Randle Scott



We cannot build our own future without helping others to build theirs.

- Bill Clinton



If the earth does grow inhospitable toward human presence, it is primarily because we have lost our sense of courtesy toward the earth and its inhabitants.

- Thomas Berry



The future belongs to those who give the next generation reason for hope.

- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin



When a scientist is ahead of his times, it is often through misunderstanding of current, rather than intuition of future truth. In science there is never any error so gross that it won't one day, from some perspective, appear prophetic.

- Jean Rostand



The immediate future is going to be tragic for all of us unless we find a way of making the vast educational resources of this country serve the true purpose of education, truth and justice.

- Anne Sullivan



The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

- C. S. Lewis



One faces the future with one's past.

- Pearl S. Buck



Study the past if you would define the future.

- Confucius



The future has a way of arriving unannounced.

- George Will



The future is here, now, and the past is full of actual deeds, real history. Utopias hardly have the meat on their bones to sustain a people in grave times.

- Patricia Hampl



Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger, misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good; that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond our understanding; and that there is always tomorrow.

- Dorothy Thompson



Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.

- Percy Bysshe Shelley



Prediction is very difficult, especially of the future.

- Niels Bohr



I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.

- Albert Einstein



The future is made of the same stuff as the present.

- Simone Weil



I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging of the future but by the past.

- Edward Gibbon



My will shall shape the future. Whether I fail or succeed shall be no man's doing but my own. I am the force; I can clear any obstacle before me or I can be lost in the maze. My choice; my responsibility; win or lose, only I hold the key to my destiny.

- Elaine Maxwell



Let us revere, let us worship, but erect and open-eyed, the highest, not the lowest; the future, not the past!

- Charlotte Perkins Gilman



In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.

- Alex Haley



Let the workers organize. Let the toilers assemble. Let their crystallized voice proclaim their injustices and demand their privileges. Let all thoughtful citizens sustain them, for the future of Labor is the future of America.

- John L. Lewis



We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.

- Anais Nin



Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.

- John F. Kennedy



The wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men.

- John F. Kennedy



In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.

- Eric Hoffer