Isaac Asimov Quotes

It must take account of what it decrees for today in order that today may not paralyze tomorrow.

Foresight is not about predicting the future, it's about minimizing surprise.

My time at Shell was a most valuable experience because it taught me to look at the world in a long-term way. Shell takes a 20-year view on events and plans for different scenarios. It makes you see the world as a kind of large matrix.

We can do things the cheap way, the simple way, for the short-term and without regard for the future. Or, we can make the extra effort, do the hard work, absorb the criticism and make decisions that will cause a better future.

I must analyze, from what I do now, what will be the impact two or three or five years in the future. What is the statement I want to make?

Neither man nor nation can prosper unless, in dealing with the present, thought is steadily taken for the future.

We're so used to thinking in the short term, and the minute you speak in more long-term language then you tend to get dismissed as utopian and so on. We have a real problem here in making long-term thinking respectable

Defending yesterday … is far more risky than making tomorrow.

The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward.

I always say that my job is not to think about today. My job is to look around the corner and feel and see what's coming, and then warn everybody else.

Our job is not to predict the future. Rather, it's to suggest all the possible futures - so that society can make informed decisions about where we want to go.

Planning means looking ahead.

We've gotta be trying to think of what's coming next before it comes next.

The man of action has the present, but the thinker controls the future.

I think all presidents should take the long view of history.

Human foresight often leaves its proudest possessor only a choice of evils.

America looks 10 minutes ahead; Japan looks 10 years.

A man who does not think and plan long ahead will find trouble right at his door.

We have to always look ahead enough moves to be well prepared, even for victory!

This idea of anticipation is key to investing and to business generally. You can't wait for an opportunity to become obvious. You have to think, "Here's what other people and companies have done under certain circumstances. Now, under these new circumstances, how is this management likely to behave?"

Leadership is about making decisions with the information you have, not the information people will have 12 years later, i kind of feel sorry for my friend Jeb Bush.

The ablest administrators do not merely draw logical conclusions from the array of facts of the past which their expert assistants bring to them, they have a vision of the future.

Christ told his disciples not to be anxious about tomorrow, but he never said not to consider tomorrow. Intelligent problem solving demands careful consideration of the future effects of present solutions.

It is better to anticipate than to react.

It is the part of a wise man to keep himself today for tomorrow, and not to venture all his eggs in one basket.