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I can't predict the future and I don't have respect for people who try to.

I am incredibly bad at predicting the future; I am only smart enough to observe the present and listen to my intuition about tendencies.

We should keep in mind that it is easy to concoct stories explaining the past or to become confident about dubious scenarios of the future. We should view both explanations and prophecies with skepticism.

I stopped predicting the future a long time ago.

I know of no way of judging the future but by the past.

People don't realize that we cannot forecast the future. What we can do is have probabilities of what causes what, but that's as far as we go. And I've 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.

My own nature hovers between neurotic and paranoid. I've developed the habit of mentally listing things that make me optimistic about the future. I do it every day.

I have a strong impulse to protect history and time and the lineage of events.

That's kind of like how jazz is sometimes. You're out there predicting the future, and no one believes you.

As a historian, what I trust is my ability to take a mass of information and tell a story shaped around it.