Long-Term Trends Quotes

There are two things that have been true throughout history in big hunks. You can find differences in ten years, but in 50 year hunks, 100 years hunks, you'll find two things to be true. One, the world is always getting better. Two, people always think it's getting worse.

Someone is an ignoramus who would say that, 'Oh, we had three hurricanes this year. This proves that somehow the climate is warming.' The earth is 4.5 billion years old, and you're going to say that we had four hurricanes and so it proves a theory?

Angela Merkel has been focused on the right things. She has focused on the interests of her citizens - and not just in a narrow, short-term way, but in a very thoughtful - Let's make the world a better place for future generations as well - kind of way. Whether it's about climate or migration, she's not afraid to look at the longer-term trendlines and say, OK, we need position ourselves here, even if it doesn't seem obvious - this is the direction we need to go in. People respect that in Merkel, that a politician has a vision for the long term.

I'm an inventor. I became interested in long-term trends because an invention has to make sense in the world in which it is finished, not the world in which it is started.

I'm not interested in current events per se, but I am interested in how certain aspects of social or public life that might seem ultra-contemporary actually take their place in a long American continuum.

There's a difference between climate & weather, moron!

If you're building a consumer app, you're necessarily coupled to the intrinsic time cycle of human fashion in that it's a fashion-driven space, and we see that in the cycle of these various apps. I think for infrastructure that that just naturally tends to play out over a longer time horizon.

While crime is indeed up in some cities in the last month or so since the stay-at-home orders lifted, crime is nonetheless down overall for 2020. Indeed, violent crime has trended downward now for decades.

Historically, we have always seen reversion to the mean. After stocks have had an unusually great 10 or 20 years, they typically turn in subpar results over the next 10 or 20, and after bad 10- to 20-year stretches, the next 10 to 20 tend to be above average.

If you look over the course of a hundred years, I think the gradual erosion of the consensus that's held our country together is probably more serious than a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings.

The long view of the Census bureau allows some changes that are taken for granted to be studied in more detail. Everyone knows, for example, that people get married later than they used to.

Secular cycles are the long periods - as long as decades - that come to define each market era. These cycles alternate between long-term bull and bear markets.

I recently reread an article of mine written in 1964, and I think it is still valid. There is not much difference. Many of the items on the agenda 37 years ago are still there.

Can you say that in 20 years people would still use the iPhone? Maybe not. Maybe we'd have a new product or something more innovative. What I can say today is that, in 20 years, I'm quite convinced that people will still drink Dom Perignon.

To look at long term trends in our economy, in our society, in the international sphere and using my best judgment, shape policies that will serve the American people, keep them safe, keep our economy growing, put people back to work.

The best scientific evidence suggests temperatures are rising, and the best scientific evidence suggests man-made anthropogenic carbon emissions have some substantial thing to do with that. However, does that mean the trend will continue forever? We don't know.

Based on a lifetime of observations and a few decades in the markets, I understand that societies, beliefs and fashions all move in long arcs of time. We call these arcs several things: cycles, periods, eras.

History's long arc is different than the today's headlines.