Alan Greenspan Quotes

History shows us that people are terrible about guessing what is going to happen - next week, next month, and especially next year.

The problem with predictions is that so much of the future depends on external factors.

It's the ability to foretell what will happen tomorrow, next month, and next year --- and to explain afterward why it didn't happen.

Forecasting will always be somewhat of a coin toss.

No one can escape the iron rule that once you make a forecast, you know you're going to be wrong; you just don't know when and in which direction!

Forecasting is very difficult, especially when it involves the future.

We're better in the rearview mirror than we are at predicting - 'cause you're never going to be right every time. You can handicap it. You can point to certain elements that make it work, and many of those elements come straight out of epidemiology, right?

I've never been able to predict the future of anything.

An economist's guess is liable to be as good as anybody else's.

The laws of probability, so true in general, so fallacious in particular.

I've ceased making predictions on things because we'll see how they turn out.

Probability is expectation founded upon partial knowledge. A perfect acquaintance with all the circumstances affecting the occurrence of an event would change expectation into certainty, and leave nether room nor demand for a theory of probabilities.

I don't think of myself predicting things. I'm expressing possibilities. Things that could happen. To a large extent it's a question of how badly people want them to.

One of my few shortcomings is that I can't predict the future.

Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future.

Predictions are so often, so wrong ... The future is just too complicated.

It’s very hard to predict the weather. Predicting human affairs is very difficult.

In the intelligence business you are almost never completely wrong or completely right.

It would be foolish, in forming our expectations, to attach great weight to matters which are very uncertain.

There are two kinds of economists in the world. Those who don't know the future and those who don't know that they don't know the future.

Predictions are hard, especially about the future.

There is no formula that will guarantee success in forecasting, no magic words that will part the clouds. The real problem, as the old saw puts it, is that the future lies ahead.

You never know what's going to happen in the future.

Nobody knows what will happen in the future.

It's always dangerous quoting numbers and expectations.