It is I claim nonsense to say that it does not matter which individual man acted as the nucleus for the change. It is precisely this that makes history unpredictable into the future.

I can't predict the future.

I shall go further and say that even if an examination of the past could lead to any valid prediction concerning man's future that prediction would be the contrary of reassuring.

Like many other touchstones of twenty-first-century pop culture 'The Sopranos' was hatched in the late Nineties predicting a future that never arrived. It was designed for a decade that would be just like the Nineties except more so in an America that enjoyed seeing itself as smarter and braver and freer than ever before.

When my job was attempting to predict future economic developments for the Shell oil company I was frequently reminded of an Arabic saying: 'Those who claim to foresee the future are lying even if by chance they are later proved right.'

The purpose of thinking about the future is not to predict it but to raise people's hopes.

There's no point in making predictions. It's not worth speculating because nothing is set in stone and things change all the time in football. Today there are opportunities that no one knows if they will come round again in the future.

The future is too interesting and dangerous to be entrusted to any predictable reliable agency. We need all the fallibility we can get. Most of all we need to preserve the absolute unpredictability and total improbability of our connected minds. That way we can keep open all the options as we have in the past.

When you try to predict future E.R.A.'s with past E.R.A.'s you're making a mistake.

I stopped predicting the future a long time ago.