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At a very young age I was predicting outcomes, trying to take all the information and find the best route to wherever I was going. I avoided a lot of pitfalls because of that.

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.

The key to making a good forecast is not in limiting yourself to quantitative information.

One of my few shortcomings is that I can't predict the future.

My mother tells this story that when I first went to school, I thought I was going to help the teachers. I didn't realise I was going to get educated.

I always say that failure was my friend. I learned nothing at school, so I just lived in my own world.

My mother taught me that we all have the power to achieve our dreams. What I lacked was the courage.

Tests conducted before I graduated predicted a future for me in journalism, forestry, or the teaching of music; persons who know me well could recognize some truth in those seemingly errant prognoses.

When I was growing up and trying to get my foot on the ladder, I had the self-belief that my mother taught me, and it never occurred to me that anything could go wrong. I've learned life can't be like that.

Occasionally, I would focus on a particular school project and become obsessed with, what seemed to my mother, to be trivial details instead of apportioning the time I spent on school work in a more efficient way.