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ULTIME PAROLE FAMOSE Top 87 Bad Predictions about the Future |
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# «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.» # «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.» # «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.» # «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.» # «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. # «The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit
to this fever for writing; every one must be an author; some out
of vanity, to acquire celebrity and raise up a name, others for
the sake of mere gain.» # «Ours has been the first [expedition], and doubtless to
be the last, to visit this profitless locality.» # «There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. As this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them.» General Tommy Franks, March 22nd, 2003. Light Bulb # «Such startling announcements as these should be deprecated as being unworthy of science and mischievous to its true progress.» Sir William Siemens, on Edison's light bulb, 1880. # «Everyone acquainted with the subject will recognize it
as a conspicuous failure.» Events # «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.» # «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.» # «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.» # «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.» # «The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit
to this fever for writing; every one must be an author; some out
of vanity, to acquire celebrity and raise up a name, others for
the sake of mere gain.» # «Ours has been the first [expedition], and doubtless to
be the last, to visit this profitless locality.» # «There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses
weapons of mass destruction. As this operation continues, those
weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have
produced them and who guard them.» Light Bulb # «Such startling announcements as these should be deprecated as being unworthy of science and mischievous to its true progress.» Sir William Siemens, on Edison's light bulb, 1880. # «Everyone acquainted with the subject will recognize it
as a conspicuous failure.»
# «That the automobile has practically reached the limit
of its development is suggested by the fact that during the past
year no improvements of a radical nature have been introduced.» # «The ordinary "horseless carriage" is at present
a luxury for the wealthy; and although its price will probably fall
in the future, it will never, of course, come into as common use
as the bicycle.» Airplanes # «Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.» # «It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere.» Thomas Edison, American inventor, 1895. # «Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.» # «There will never be a bigger plane built.» Computers # «There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their
home.» # «I have traveled the length and breadth of this country
and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data
processing is a fad that won't last out the year.» # «But what... is it good for?» Radio # «The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value.
Who would pay for a message sent to no one in particular?» # «Lee DeForest has said in many newspapers and over his
signature that it would be possible to transmit the human voice
across the Atlantic before many years. Based on these absurd and
deliberately misleading statements, the misguided public ... has
been persuaded to purchase stock in his company ...» Space Travel # «Space travel is utter bilge.» # «Space travel is bunk.» Sir Harold Spencer Jones, Astronomer Royal of the UK, 1957 (two weeks later Sputnik orbited the Earth). # «To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him
into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers
can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return
to earth - all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne.
I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur
regardless of all future advances.» Rockets # «... too far-fetched to be considered.» Editor of Scientific American, in a letter to Robert Goddard about Goddard's idea of a rocket-accelerated airplane bomb, 1940 (German V2 missiles came down on London 3 years later). # «A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth's atmosphere.» New York Times, 1936 Atomic and Nuclear Power # «Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality in 10 years.» -– Alex Lewyt, president of vacuum cleaner company Lewyt Corp., in the New York Times in 1955. # «That is the biggest fool thing we have ever done [research
on]... The bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives.» # «Atomic energy might be as good as our present-day explosives, but it is unlikely to produce anything very much more dangerous.» Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister, 1939. # «The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is
a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power
from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine.» # «There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.» Albert Einstein, 1932. # «There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the
atom.» Films # «The cinema is little more than a fad. It's canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage." -– Charlie Chaplin, actor, producer, director, and studio founder, 1916. Telephone/Telegraph # «The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not.
We have plenty of messenger boys.» # «It's a great invention but who would want to use it anyway?» # «A man has been arrested in New York for attempting to
extort funds from ignorant and superstitious people by exhibiting
a device which he says will convey the human voice any distance
over metallic wires so that it will be heard by the listener at
the other end. He calls this instrument a telephone. Well-informed
people know that it is impossible to transmit the human voice over
wires.» Television # «Television won't last because people will soon get tired
of staring at a plywood box every night.» # «While theoretically and technically television may be
feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility, a
development of which we need waste little time dreaming.» Railroads # «What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives traveling twice as fast as stagecoaches?» The Quarterly Review, March edition, 1825. # «Rail travel at high speed is not possible, because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.» Dr Dionysys Larder (1793-1859), professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, University College London. Other Technology # «[By 1985], machines will be capable of doing any work
Man can do.» # «The world potential market for copying machines is 5000
at most.» # «I must confess that my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocating its crew and floundering at sea.» HG Wells, British novelist, in 1901. # «X-rays will prove to be a hoax.» Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, 1883. # «Very interesting Whittle, my boy, but it will never work.» # «The idea that cavalry will be replaced by these iron coaches
is absurd. It is little short of treasonous.» # «Caterpillar landships are idiotic and useless. Those officers and men are wasting their time and are not pulling their proper weight in the war.» Fourth Lord of the British Admiralty, 1915. # «What, sir, would you make a ship sail against the wind
and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you, excuse
me, I have not the time to listen to such nonsense.» # «The phonograph has no commercial value at all.» Thomas Edison, American inventor, 1880s. # «If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment.
The literature was full of examples that said 'you can't do this'.» # «Fooling around with alternating current is just a waste
of time. Nobody will use it, ever.» |