Emily Greene Balch Quotes

Predictions are hard, especially about the future.

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

Events alone rarely provide much guide to the future.

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

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

The ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year – and to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.

You can't see the future, there's no such thing. It's all bets. You'll never get the same answer from two seers. But that doesn't mean either of them's wrong.

Nobody wants a prediction that the future will be more or less like the present, even if that is, statistically speaking, an excellent prediction.

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.

We do not know enough about how the present will lead into the future.

You mustn't take what I say as gospel because no one can second-guess the future.

I can't speak for the future. I have no crystal ball.

I am incredibly bad at predicting the future; I am only smart enough to observe the present and listen to my intuition about tendencies.

I'm a lousy predictor of the future.

I can't predict the future.

Predicting the future is very difficult. As a historian I have trouble trying to predict the past.

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

None of us posses a crystal ball.

I don't like to make predictions, because my life's been pretty unpredictable so far.

Foreseeing the future is always difficult.

No one can predict the future.

No one predicts the future. No one tries to.

We can speculate. Last time I checked, the future doesn't take my advice.

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

All the skills which I have acquired during my sociological life allow me to diagnose and explain what is going on, but not to predict what will happen.