Omar Khayyam Quotes

History is the best guide to the future.

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 best way to predict the future is to study the past, or prognosticate.

After all, the past is our only real guide to the future, and historical analogies are instruments for distilling and organizing the past and converting it to a map by which we can navigate.

We can be almost certain of being wrong about the future, if we are wrong about the past.

Reflective thinking turns experience into insight.

From the very beginning, history wasn't content simply to be nostalgic fairytales; it wanted to make you think.

A forecasting game is a kind of simulation, a kind of scenario, a kind of teleconference, a kind of artifact from the future - and more - that enlists the participants as 'first-person forecasters.'

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.

You can observe a lot by watching.

If you have to forecast, forecast often.

Literature is analysis after the event.

The key to making a good forecast is not in limiting yourself to quantitative information.

I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.

The past has infinite value if one learns from it.

I remember when I was a kid in school and teachers would explain things to me about what I read, and I'd think, Where did they get that? I didn't read that in there. Later you look at it and think, That's kind of an interesting idea.

But I don't think I have any particular talent for prediction, because when you have three or four elements in hand, you don't have to be a genius to reach certain conclusions.

I think you can learn from history.

What is the good of experience if you do not reflect?

I learn all these things about the record talking about it after it's finished.

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 was always an outsider, always standing outside, observing and trying to figure things out. Which is exactly what you need to do as a writer, I suppose.

And if you don't have your ears open, you're not going to be able to figure out what you should be doing.

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

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