Predictions Quotes - Page 3

• Would you bet your paycheck on a weather forecast for tomorrow? If not, then why should this country bet billions on global warming predictions that have even less foundation?

  Thomas Sowell

  Country, Weather, Foundation

  "Random Thoughts". Column at Jewish World Review, www.jewishworldreview.com. April 06, 1999.

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• My approach works not by making valid predictions but by allowing me to correct false ones.

  George Soros

  Approach, Allowing

  George Soros (1994). “The Alchemy of Finance: Reading the Mind of the Market”, p.301, John Wiley & Sons

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• At a university they had the freshman class make the same predictions that some of the well-known psychics do every year, and they found the freshman class did better

  Frederick Lenz

  Psychics, Class, Years

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• It does not matter who you are, or how smart you are, or what title you have, or how many of you there are, and certainly not how many papers your side has published, if your prediction is wrong then your hypothesis is wrong. Period.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Smart, Your Side, Matter

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• It is not the bigness of anything in this kind that can hinder its motion, if the motive faculty be answerable thereunto. We see a great ship swims as well as a small cork, and an eagle flies in the air as well as a little gnat. 'Tis likely enough that there may be means invented of journeying to the Moon; and how happy they shall be that are first successful in this attempt.

  John Wilkins

  Mean, Successful, Moon

  "A Discourse Concerning a New World and Another Planet". Book by John Wilkins, Book 1, Chapter 14, p. 238-239, 1640.

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• Well, gentlemen, do you believe in the possibility of aerial locomotion by machines heavier than air? ... You ask yourselves doubtless if this apparatus, so marvellously adapted for aerial locomotion, is susceptible of receiving greater speed. It is not worth while to conquer space if we cannot devour it. I wanted the air to be a solid support to me, and it is. I saw that to struggle against the wind I must be stronger than the wind, and I am.

  Jules Verne

  Believe, Struggle, Air

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• Flying would give such occasions for intrigues as people cannot meet with who have nothing but legs to carry them.

  Joseph Addison

  People, Giving, Flying

  Joseph Addison (1860). “The Tatler. The Guardian”, p.378

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• Yet I do seriously and on good grounds affirm it possible to make a flying chariot in which a man may sit and give such a motion unto it as shall convey him through the air. And this perhaps might be made large enough to carry divers men at the same time, together with food for their viaticum and commodities for traffic.

  John Wilkins

  Men, Air, Giving

  A Discourse Concerning a New World and Another Planet book 1, proposition 14 (1640)

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• He that can swim needs not despair to fly; to swim is to fly in a grosser fluid, and to fly is to swim in a subtler. We are only to proportion our power of resistance to the different density of matter through which we are to pass. You will be necessarily upborne by the air if you can renew any impulse upon it faster than the air can recede from the pressure.

  Samuel Johnson

  Air, Swim, Different

  Samuel Johnson (1850). “The history of Rasselas, prince of Abyssinia, a tale”, p.5

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• Few people who know of the work of Langley, Lilienthal, Pilcher, Maxim and Chanute but will be inclined to believe that long before the year 2000 A.D., and very probably before 1950, a successful aeroplane will have soared and come home safe and sound.

  H. G. Wells

  Believe, Home, Successful

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• I have been in relatively high-risk businesses all of my adult life. Few of the others, however, had the possibility of direct gains in knowledge which this one had. I have confidence in the equipment, the planning, the training. I suspect that on a risk-gain ratio, this project would compare very, very favorably with those to which I've been accustomed on the past 20 years.

  Neil Armstrong

  Future, Past, Years

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• I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning, or of the expectation of good results from any of the trials we heard of. So you will understand that I would not care to be a member of the Aeronautical Society.

  Lord Kelvin

  Future, Expectations, Molecules

  "The Experts Speak : The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation" by Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky, (p. 236), 1984.

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• 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.

  Antonio Tabucchi

  Thinking, Hands, Four Elements

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• Absolute prediction is completion . . . is death!

  Frank Herbert

  Absolutes, Completion

  Frank Herbert (2008). “Children of Dune”, p.234, Penguin

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• The labor of rising from the ground will be great, ... but as we mount higher, the earth's attraction, and the body's gravity, will be gradually diminished till we arrive at a region where the man will float in the air without any tendency to fall.

  Samuel Johnson

  Fall, Men, Air

  Samuel Johnson (1940). “The reader's Johnson: a representative selection from his writings”

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• The first real air-liner, carrying some five or six hundred passengers, will probably appear after or towards the end of the battle between fixed and moving-wing machines. And it will be a flying boat.

  Oliver Stewart

  Real, Moving, Air

  Oliver Stewart (1928). “Aeolus: Or, The Future of the Flying Machine”

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• Because of recent improvements in the accuracy of theoretical predictions based on large scale ab initio quantum mechanical calculations, meaningful comparisons between theoretical and experimental findings have become possible.

  Yuan T. Lee

  Meaningful, Improvement, Quantum

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• But Friedman seemed to share Friedrich Hayek's extreme and inaccurate view that socialism of the sort that Britain embraced under the old Labour Party was incompatible with democracy, and I don't think that there is a good theoretical or empirical basis for that view. The Road to Serfdom flunks the test of accuracy of prediction!

  Richard Posner

  Party, Thinking, Views

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• Sir, Your letter of the 15th is received, but Age has long since obliged me to withhold my mind from Speculations of the difficulty of those of your letter, that their are means of artificial buoyancy by which man may be supported in the Air, the Balloon has proved, and that means of directing it may be discovered is against no law of Nature and is therefore possible as in the case of Birds, but to do this by mechanical means alone in a medium so rare and unassisting as air must have the aid of some principal not yet generally known.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Mean, Men, Air

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• The aeroplane is an invention of the devil and will never play any part in such a serious business as the defence of the nation, my boy!

  Sam Hughes

  Boys, Play, Devil

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• The whole procedure [of shooting rockets into space] . . . presents difficulties of so fundamental a nature, that we are forced to dismiss the notion as essentially impracticable, in spite of the author's insistent appeal to put aside prejudice and to recollect the supposed impossibility of heavier-than-air flight before it was actually accomplished. An analogy such as this may be misleading, and we believe it to be so in this case.

  Richard van der Riet Woolley

  Future, Believe, Space

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• It is my contention that an agent ideal to the use of the scientific militarist, for both the air raid and the long distance bombardment is now in the process of development; that its eventual perfection is but a matter of time; and its use in warfare is certain to occur. I refer to the rocket. The perfection of the rocket in my opinion will give to future warfare the horror unknown in previous conflicts and will make possible destruction of nations, in a cool, passionless and scientific fashion.

  David Lasser

  Fashion, Distance, Future

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• I do not think that a flight across the Atlantic will be made in our time, and in our time I include the youngest readers.

  Charles Rolls

  Thinking, Aviation, Flight

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• No place is safe - no place is at peace. There is no place where a women and her daughter can hide and be at peace. The war comes through the air, bombs drop in the night. Quiet people go out in the morning, and see air-fleets passing overhead - dripping death - dripping death!

  H. G. Wells

  Daughter, Morning, Quiet People

  H. G. Wells (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of H. G. Wells”, p.2393, Delphi Classics

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• In less than twenty-five years . . . the motor-car will be obsolete, because the aeroplane will run along the ground as well as fly over it.

  Philip Gibbs

  Running, Years, Car

  Philip Gibbs (1928). “The Day After To-morrow: What is Going to Happen to the World?”

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