Some of the Top 87 Bad Predictions about the Future:
- «We will bury you.»
Nikita Krushchev, Soviet Premier, predicting Soviet communism will win over U.S. capitalism, 1958. - «Everything that can be invented has been invented.»
Charles H. Duell, an official at the US patent office, 1899. - «I see no good reasons why the views given in this volume should shock the religious sensibilities of anyone.»
Charles Darwin, in the foreword to his book, The Origin of Species, 1869. - «Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.»
Irving Fisher, economics professor at Yale University, 1929. - «If anything remains more or less unchanged, it will be the role of women.»
David Riesman, conservative American social scientist, 1967. - «It will be gone by June.»
Variety, passing judgement on rock ‘n roll in 1955. - «Democracy will be dead by 1950.»
John Langdon-Davies, A Short History of The Future, 1936. - «A short-lived satirical pulp.»
TIME, writing off Mad magazine in 1956. - «And for the tourist who really wants to get away from it all, safaris in Vietnam»
Newsweek, predicting popular holidays for the late 1960s. - «Four or five frigates will do the business without any military force.» -– British prime minister Lord North, on dealing with the rebellious American colonies, 1774.
- «In all likelihood world inflation is over.»
International Monetary Fund Ceo, 1959. - «This antitrust thing will blow over.»
Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft. - «Remote shopping, while entirely feasible, will flop – because women like to get out of the house, like to handle merchandise, like to be able to change their minds.»
TIME, 1966, in one sentence writing off e-commerce long before anyone had ever heard of it. - «They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist-»
Last words of Gen. John Sedgwick, spoken as he looked out over the parapet at enemy lines during the Battle of Spotsylvania in 1864. - «Our country has deliberately undertaken a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far reaching in purpose.” -– Herbert Hoover, on Prohibition, 1928.
- «It will be years – not in my time – before a woman will become Prime Minister.»
Margaret Thatcher, future Prime Minister, October 26th, 1969. - «Read my lips: NO NEW TAXES.»
George Bush, 1988. - «You will be home before the leaves have fallen from the trees.» -– Kaiser Wilhelm, to the German troops, August 1914.
- «This is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time.» -– Neville Chamberlain, British Prime Minister, September 30th, 1938.
- «That virus is a pussycat.» -– Dr. Peter Duesberg, molecular-biology professor at U.C. Berkeley, on HIV, 1988.
- «The case is a loser.» -– Johnnie Cochran, on soon-to-be client O.J.’s chances of winning, 1994.
- «Reagan doesn’t have that presidential look.» -– United Artists Executive, rejecting Reagan as lead in 1964 film The Best Man.
- «Capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of nature, its own negation.»
Karl Marx. - «Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote.»
Grover Cleveland, U.S. President, 1905. - «Man will not fly for 50 years.»
Wilbur Wright, American aviation pioneer, to brother Orville, after a disappointing flying experiment, 1901 (their first successful flight was in 1903). - «I am tired of all this sort of thing called science here… We have spent millions in that sort of thing for the last few years, and it is time it should be stopped.»
Simon Cameron, U.S. Senator, on the Smithsonian Institute, 1901. - «The Americans are good about making fancy cars and refrigerators, but that doesn’t mean they are any good at making aircraft. They are bluffing. They are excellent at bluffing.»
Hermann Goering, Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, 1942. - «With over fifteen types of foreign cars already on sale here, the Japanese auto industry isn’t likely to carve out a big share of the market for itself.»
Business Week, August 2, 1968.