Forecasts Quotes

• Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.

  Lord Kelvin

  Silly, Creativity, Science

  99 Copy quote

• The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?

  David Sarnoff

  Silly, Creativity, Dumb

  21 Copy quote

• We have long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune-tellers look good.

  Warren Buffett

  Long, Looks, Investing

  Warren Buffett (2009). “Warren Buffett on Business: Principles from the Sage of Omaha”, p.165, John Wiley & Sons

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• A Yale University management professor in response to student Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service: The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C', the idea must be feasible.

  Frederick W. Smith

  Ideas, Yale, Order

  9 Copy quote

• A good portfolio is more than a long list of good stocks and bonds. It is a balanced whole, providing the investor with protections and opportunities with respect to a wide range of contingencies.

  Harry Markowitz

  Business, Opportunity, Long

  115 Copy quote

• Forecasts may tell you a great deal about the forecaster; they tell you nothing about the future.

  Warren Buffett

  Investing, May, Deals

  21 Copy quote

• Winston worked in the RECORDS DEPARTMENT (a single branch of the Ministry of Truth) editing and writing for The Times. He dictated into a machine called a Speakwrite. Winston would receive articles or news-items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, in Newspeak, rectify. If, for example, the Ministry of Plenty forecast a surplus, and in reality the result was grossly less, Winston's job was to change previous versions so the old version would agree with the new one.

  George Orwell

  Jobs, Writing, Reality

  9 Copy quote

• How poor is the wisdom of men, and how uncertain their forecast!

  Teresa of Avila

  Wisdom, Men, Poor

  20 Copy quote

• Revolution can never be forecast; it cannot be foretold; it comes of itself. Revolution is brewing and is bound to flare up.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Flare Up, Revolution, Brewing

  9 Copy quote

• When you know absolutely nothing about the topic, make your forecast by asking a carefully selected probability sample of 300 others who don't know the answer either.

  Edgar Fiedler

  Asking, Answers, Topics

  7 Copy quote

• Laughter on American television has taken the place of the chorus in Greek tragedy. It is unrelenting; the news, the stock-exchange reports, and the weather forecast are about the only things spared.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Laughter, Taken, Weather

  Jean Baudrillard (1989). “America”, p.49, Verso

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• If you have reason to think that yesterday's forecast went wrong, there is no glory in sticking to it.

  Nate Silver

  Thinking, Yesterday, Glory

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• Make then your forecasts, my lords Astrologers, with your slavish physicians, by means of those astrolabes with which you seek to discern the fantastic nine moving spheres; in these you finally imprison your own minds, so that you appear to me but as parrots in a cage, while I watch you dancing up and down, turning and hopping within those circles.

  Giordano Bruno

  Moving, Mean, Circles

  "On the Infinite Universe and Worlds". Book by Giordano Bruno, 1584.

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• Confidence in a forecast rises with the amount of information that goes into it. But the accuracy of the forecast stays the same.

  Dean Williams

  Investing, Information, Accuracy

  6 Copy quote

• We've long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune tellers look good. Even now, Charlie and I continue to believe that short-term market forecasts are poison and should be kept locked up in a safe place, away from children and also from grown-ups who behave in the market like children.

  Warren Buffett

  Children, Believe, Long

  Warren Buffett (2009). “Warren Buffett on Business: Principles from the Sage of Omaha”, p.165, John Wiley & Sons

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• If you have to forecast, forecast often.

  Edgar Fiedler

  Business, Ifs

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• People dont realize that we cannot forecast the future. What we can do is have probabilities of what causes what, but thats as far as we go. And Ive had a very successful career as a forecaster, starting in 1948 forward. The number of mistakes I have made are just awesome. There is no number large enough to account for that.

  Alan Greenspan

  Mistake, Successful, Careers

  4 Copy quote

• The affairs of this world are so shifting and depend on so many accidents, that it is hard to form any judgment concerning the future; nay, we see from experience that the forecasts even of the wise almost always turn out false.

  Francesco Guicciardini

  Wise, World, Shifting

  Francesco Guicciardini (1890). “Counsels and Reflections of Francesco Guicciardini”

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• There are poems about the internet and about the shipping forecast but very few by women celebrating men.

  Germaine Greer

  Men, Shipping, Internet

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• Thick February mists cling heavily To the dead earth and to each leafless tree, And closer down upon the hilltops draw, Dull forecasts there of bright, sure-coming spring; Yet the heart gathers hope and strange delight From this dear, unlovely, wished-for sight Of leaden-misted twilights lengthening.

  Emma Lazarus

  Spring, Twilight, Heart

  4 Copy quote

• You realise Group Captain that this might be the most important weather forecast in history?

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Weather, History, Historical

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• William Tavener never heeded ominous forecasts in the domestic horizon, and he never looked for a storm until it broke.

  Willa Cather

  Personality, Storm, Horizon

  Willa Cather (2014). “A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays”, p.42, Simon and Schuster

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• Forecasts usually tell us more of the forecaster than of the forecast

  Warren Buffett

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• Pundits forecast not because they know, but because they are asked.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Investing, Pundits, Knows

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• A commonplace of political rhetoric has it that the quality of a civilization may be measured by how it cares for its elderly. Just as surely, the future of a society may be forecast by how it cares for its young.

  Daniel Patrick Moynihan

  Elderly, Civilization, Political

  Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1987). “Family and Nation: The Godkin Lectures, Harvard University”, Harcourt

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