Foreboding Quotes

• I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - [...] when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.

  Carl Sagan

  Children, Hands, America

  "A Disturbing 1995 Prediction by Carl Sagan Accurately Describes America of Today" by PAUL RATNER, bigthink.com.

  97 Copy quote

  Show source

• Even in slight things the experience of the new is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.

  Eric Hoffer

  Experience, Stirring

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• My feelings of revulsion and foreboding about nuclear weapons had not changed an iota since 1945, and they have never left me. Since I was 14, the overriding objective of my life has been to prevent the occurrence of nuclear war.

  Daniel Ellsberg

  War, Feelings, Nuclear

  "Hiroshima Day: America Has Been Asleep at the Wheel for 64 Years" by Daniel Ellsberg, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 6, 2009.

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• I do not allow myself vain regrets or foreboding.

  Mary Boykin Chesnut

  Regret, Vain

  22 Copy quote

• When we lose our tolerance for vulnerability, joy becomes foreboding.

  Brené Brown

  Joy, Tolerance, Loses

  "Dr. Brene Brown: Joy Is ‘The Most Terrifying, Difficult Emotion’", www.huffingtonpost.com. March 18, 2013.

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• The teenager seems to have replaced the Communist as the appropriate target for public controversy and foreboding.

  Edgar Friedenberg

  Inspirational, Teenage, Target

  17 Copy quote

• The old church tower and garden wall Are black with autumn rain And dreary winds foreboding call The darkness down again

  Emily Bronte

  Wall, Rain, Autumn

  11 Copy quote

• If Big Brother (of Orwell's 1984) comes to America, he will not be a fearsome, foreboding figure with a heart-chilling, omnipresent glare as in 1984. He will come with a smile on his face, a quip on his lips, a wave to the crowd, and a press that (a) dutifully reports the suppressive measures he is taking to save the nation from internal chaos and foreign threat; and (b) gingerly questions whether he will be able to succeed.

  Michael Parenti

  Brother, Heart, America

  14 Copy quote

• Every anxiety is a mild form of premonition, and from that point the shade deepens till we get the forebodings and hauntings that merge into lunacy.

  Arthur Alfred Lynch

  Anxiety, Haunting, Shade

  11 Copy quote

• As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood.

  Enoch Powell

  Blood, Rivers, Looks

  Speech at Annual Meeting of West Midlands Area Conservative Political Centre, Birmingham, 20 April 1968, in 'Observer' 21 April 1968

  133 Copy quote

  Show source

• Modern man has left the realm of the unknown and the mysterious, and has settled down in the realm of the functional. He is turned is back to the world of the foreboding and the exulting and has welcomed the world of boredom.

  Carlos Castaneda

  Men, Boredom, World

  Carlos Castaneda (1984). “Fire from Within”, p.148, Simon and Schuster

  36 Copy quote

  Show source

• Good horror is the kind that we can all relate to. We all know what it was like to be a child and hear something move in our room. Or how the teddy bear that was so cuddly and nice during the day turned into this horrible, foreboding shadow at night. Those are the kind of things that we all can relate to.

  Harrison Smith

  Children, Nice, Moving

  9 Copy quote

• I don't want to pretend like I'm clairvoyant or anything, but I had a tremendous sense of malaise about our political future. This is right around the millennium, right around 1999, when I wrote it. The Sopranos certainly reflected that; when I saw that on the air, I was like "Oh my God, I'm not alone." But it doesn't seem that the culture really caught up with that. George W. Bush won two elections... I'm not even trying to say this from a political standpoint. I think there is a resonance to the kind of glory of that period, and the foreboding of what happened.

  Matthew Weiner

  Thinking, Political, Trying

  Source: www.avclub.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is not science that has destroyed the world, despite all the gloomy forebodings of the earlier prophets. It is man who has destroyed man.

  Max Lerner

  Men, World, Destruction

  4 Copy quote

• Stir not the bitterness in the cup that I mixed for myself,' said Denethor. 'Have I not tasted it now many nights upon my tongue, foreboding that worse lay in the dregs?

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Night, Tongue, Cups

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Return of the King: Being the Third Part of the Lord of the Rings”, p.795, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sometimes, I must admit, I'd like to have a second guitarist onstage with me, but it wouldn't look right. I'd like to play for another 20 years, but I don't know... I just can't see it happening. I don't know why. It's a certain foreboding... a funny feeling... vultures.

  Jimmy Page

  Years, Play, Feelings

  12 Copy quote

• Apparently on the screen I look tall, ageless, and damned close to omniscient-delivering jeopardy-laden warnings through gritted teeth. But when people see me on the street, they say 'by God, this kid is 5 foot 5, he's got a broken nose, and looks about as foreboding as a bank teller on a lunch break.'

  Rod Serling

  Kids, Lunch Break, Feet

  14 Copy quote

• Indeed, at hearing the news that 'the old god is dead', we philosophers and 'free spirits' feel illuminated by a new dawn; our heart overflows with gratitude, amazement, forebodings, expectation - finally the horizon seems clear again, even if not bright; finally our ships may set out again, set out to face any danger; every daring of the lover of knowledge is allowed again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; maybe there has never been such an 'open sea'.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Gratitude, Lying, Heart

  Friedrich Nietzsche, Bernard Williams, Josefine Nauckhoff (2001). “Nietzsche: The Gay Science: With a Prelude in German Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs”, p.199, Cambridge University Press

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Whenever I gaze up at the moon, I feel like I'm on a time machine. I am back to that precious pinpoint of time, standing on the foreboding - yet beautiful - Sea of Tranquility. I could see our shining blue planet Earth poised in the darkness of space.

  Buzz Aldrin

  Beautiful, Moon, Blue

  37 Copy quote

• If you're doing something new there is always a sense of fear or foreboding, but you're in new ground and you have to get out your machete and cut a new path.

  Jeanine Tesori

  Cutting, Path, Something New

  "Composer Jeanine Tesori on Her Artistic Process and Rewarding Female Ambition". Interview with Victoria Myers, www.indiewire.com. March 27, 2015.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• In sad truth, half our forebodings of our neighbors are but our own wishes, which we are ashamed to utter in any other form.

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon

  Wish, Half, Neighbor

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon, F. J. Sypher (1999). “Tales and sketches”, Scholars Facsimilies & Reprint

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are strange flowers of reason to match each error of the senses. Admirable gardens of absurd beliefs, forebodings, obsessions and frenzies. Unknown, ever-changing gods take shape there.

  Louis Aragon

  Flower, Garden, Errors

  11 Copy quote

• The artist, and particularly the poet, is always an anarchist in the best sense of the word. He must heed only the call that arises within him from three strong voices: the voice of death, with all its foreboding, the voice of love and the voice of art.

  Federico Garcia Lorca

  Art, Strong, Voice

  115 Copy quote

• I steer my bark with hope in the head, leaving fear astern. My hopes indeed sometimes fail, but not oftener than the forebodings of the gloomy.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Hope, Wisdom, Fear

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.49, Cambridge University Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• My mind changes often ... People who have no mind can easily be steadfast and firm, but when a man is loaded down to the guards with it, as I am, every heavy sea of foreboding or inclination, maybe of indolence, shifts the cargo.

  Mark Twain

  Men, Sea, People

  6 Copy quote