Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

To understand the difficulty of predicting the next 100 years, we have to appreciate the difficulty that the people of 1900 had in predicting the world of 2000.

A recorded past is no more than a bygone present composed of the footprints made by human beings actually going somewhere but not knowing (in any extended sense), and certainly not revealing to us, how, they came to be afoot on these particular journeys.

He who would foresee what is to happen should look to what has happened: for all that is has its counterpart in time past.

The past is all we know of the future.

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.

When I want to understand what is happening today or try to decide what will happen tomorrow, I look back.

History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.

It is the job of the historian to say what is likely, and of faith to say what is possible.

Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.

I think you can learn from history.

Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years.

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

I know of no way of judging the future but by the past.

I can't predict the future.

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

What happens today can affect what happens tomorrow, but it cannot affect what happened yesterday.

Study the past, if you would divine the future.

The past and the present are within the field of my inquiry, but what a man may do in the future is a hard question to answer.

The further backward we look, the further forward we are likely to see.

The context of history proved invaluable.

History is an antidote to the hubris of the present.

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!

Most historians don't much like generalizations. Indeed, they make a trade of showing that this or that generalization about the past will not work here or there or then.

I'm a historian. I really like the past. But most people seem far more interested in what you can tell them about the future.

Science is the observation of things possible, whether present or past; prescience is the knowledge of things which may come to pass, though but slowly.