Predictions Quotes - Page 20

• A scientist naturally and inevitably ... mulls over the data and guesses at a solution. He proceeds to testing of the guess by new data-predicting the consequences of the guess and then dispassionately inquiring whether or not the predictions are verified.

  Edwin Powell Hubble

  Science, Data, Inquiring

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• Let us hope that the advent of a successful flying machine, now only dimly foreseen and nevertheless thought to be possible, will bring nothing but good into the world; that it shall abridge distance, make all parts of the globe accessible, bring men into closer relation with each other, advance civilization, and hasten the promised era in which there shall be nothing but peace and goodwill among all men.

  Octave Chanute

  Distance, Airplane, Successful

  Octave Chanute (1894). “Progress in Flying Machines”

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• Legends of prediction are common throughout the whole Household of Man. Gods speak, spirits speak, computers speak. Oracular ambiguity or statistical probability provides loopholes, and discrepancies are expunged by Faith.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Faith, Men, Legends

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.46, Penguin

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• If my fans think I can do everything I say I can do, then they're crazier than I am. After one of his fight predictions turned out to be wrong.

  Muhammad Ali

  Fighting, Thinking, Boxing

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• My belief is firm in a law of compensation. The true rewards are ever in proportion to the labor and sacrifices made. This is one of the reasons why I feel certain that of all my inventions, the Magnifying Transmitter will prove most important and valuable to future generations. I am prompted to this prediction not so much by thoughts of the commercial and industrial revolution which it will surely bring about, but of the humanitarian consequences of the many achievements it makes possible. Considerations of mere utility weigh little in the balance against the higher benefits of civilization.

  Nikola Tesla

  Hard Work, Sacrifice, Law

  Nikola Tesla (2016). “My Inventions: [Illustrated & Biography Added]”, p.79, eKitap Projesi

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• It is, I believe, justifiable to make the generalization that anything an organic chemist can synthesize can be made without him. All he does is increase the probability that given reactions will 'go.' So it is quite reasonable to assume that given sufficient time and proper conditions, nucleotides, amino acids, proteins, and nucleic acids will arise by reactions that, though less probable, are as inevitable as those by which the organic chemist fulfills his predictions. So why not self-duplicating virus-like systems capable of further evolution?

  George Wells Beadle

  Believe, Science, Self

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• Most loss of life and property has been due to the collapse of antiquated and unsafe structures, mostly of brick and other masonry. ... There is progress of California toward building new construction according to earthquake-resistant design. We would have less reason to ask for earthquake prediction if this was universal.

  Charles Francis Richter

  Life, Loss, Science

  Earthquake information bulletin, Volume 12, Issue 1, p. 8, 1980.

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• It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory-if we look for confirmations. Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions... A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice. Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or refute it.

  Karl Popper

  Science, Thinking, People

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• All the scientist creates in a fact is the language in which he enunciates it. If he predicts a fact, he will employ this language, and for all those who can speak and understand it, his prediction is free from ambiguity. Moreover, this prediction once made, it evidently does not depend upon him whether it is fulfilled or not.

  Henri Poincare

  Freedom, Science, Understanding

  Henri Poincare (2012). “The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare”, p.547, Modern Library

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• Till facts are grouped & called there can be no prediction. The only advantage of discovering laws is to foretell what will happen & to see bearing of scattered facts.

  Charles Darwin

  Science, Law, Facts

  "Notebooks on Transmutation of Species".

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• There's a real opportunity to have a vertical takeoff and landing electric supersonic jet.

  Elon Musk

  Real, Airplane, Opportunity

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• The prediction of nuclear winter is drawn not, of course, from any direct experience with the consequences of global nuclear war, but rather from an investigation of the governing physics.

  Carl Sagan

  War, Winter, Science

  "A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race". Book by Carl Sagan, p. 26, 1990.

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• Predictions of the future are never anything but projections of present automatic processes and procedures, that is, of occurrences that are likely to come to pass if men do not act and if nothing unexpected happens; every action, for better or worse, and every accident necessarily destroys the whole pattern in whose frame the prediction moves and where it finds its evidence.

  Hannah Arendt

  Moving, Men, Patterns

  Hannah Arendt (1970). “On Violence”, p.13, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• In this acausal world, scientists are helpless. Their predictions become postdictions- Their equations become justifications, their logic, illogic. Scientists turn reckless and mutter like gamblers who cannot stop betting. Scientists are buffoons, not because they are rational but because the cosmos is irrational. Or perhaps it is not because the cosmos is irrational but because they are rational. Who can say which, in an acausal world?

  Alan Lightman

  Science, Cosmos, World

  Alan Lightman (2011). “Einstein's Dreams”, p.29, Vintage

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• Malthus argued a century and a half ago that man, by using up all his available resources, would forever press on the limits of subsistence, thus condemning humanity to an indefinite future of misery and poverty. We can now begin to hope and, I believe, know that Malthus was expressing not a law of nature, but merely the limitation then of scientific and social wisdom. The truth or falsity of his prediction will depend now, with the tools we have, on our own actions, now and in the years to come.

  John F. Kennedy

  Believe, Future, Science

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• Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.

  George Orwell

  Party, Past, Expression

  George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.140, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Each morning the day lies like a fresh shirt on our bed; this incomparably fine, incomparably tightly woven tissue of pure prediction fits us perfectly. The happiness of the next twenty-four hours depends on our ability, on waking, to pick it up.

  Walter Benjamin

  Life, Morning, Lying

  Walter Benjamin, Peter Demetz (1986). “Reflections: essays, aphorisms, autobiographical writing”, Schocken

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• Experimental confirmation of a prediction is merely a measurement. An experiment disproving a prediction is a discovery.

  Enrico Fermi

  Science, Discovery, Engineering

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• Everything is becoming science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20th century.

  J. G. Ballard

  Reality, Sprung Up, Fiction

  "Fictions of Every Kind" (1971)

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• The prediction I can make with the highest confidence is that the most amazing discoveries will be the ones we are not today wise enough to foresee.

  Carl Sagan

  Wise, Discovery, Today

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium”, p.49, Ballantine Books

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• If we do our homework right, never again should an asteroid that can do damage on the ground impact the Earth. We're living in a time-with our technology-we have the capability to eliminate that major shaper of evolution . . . the evolution of life on this planet.

  Rusty Schweickart

  Future, Technology, Impact

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• The aeroplane. . . is not capable of unlimited magnification. It is not likely that it will ever carry more than five or seven passengers. High speed monoplanes will carry even less. . . . Over cities, the aerial sentry or policeman will be found. A thousand aeroplanes flying to the opera must be kept in line and each allowed to alight upon the roof of the auditorium, in its proper turn.

  Waldemar Kaempffert

  Cities, Flying, Lines

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• Both angels and demons are ignorant of the future, yet they make predictions. The angels do so when God reveals the future to them and commands them to prophesy, and what they prophesy comes to pass. Demons also make predictions, but these are only guesses based on what they see from afar.

  John of Damascus

  Angel, Ignorant, Afar

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• I make predictions about what I'm going to do before a fight, that makes me nervous because I've gotten so good at it until people really look for me to do it.If I say the man's going to fall in round five, like your man Henry Cooper here, he was stopped in round five but it was on a cut - it wasn't because he was out. But usually 'm on the spot with my predictions and some people really gamble and bet money on the rounds I say.

  Muhammad Ali

  Fall, Fighting, Cutting

  "Parkinson" with Michael Parkinson, www.mirror.co.uk. 1971.

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• When I was in my teens, I made an appraisal of how comfortable my life could turn out when I became the age I am now. Because of a mechanical failure, the prediction was inexact.

  Arthur Nersesian

  Age, Teens, Made

  Arthur Nersesian (2009). “The Fuck Up”, p.4, Simon and Schuster

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