It’s hard for a player to plan for the future, especially in a game like football.

Invest three percent of your income in yourself (self-development) in order to guarantee your future.

He who could foresee affairs three days in advance would be rich for thousands of years.

Be nice to your children. After all, they are going to choose your nursing home.

When I watch professional football, I love listening to John Madden because I know he knows what he’s talking about. He’s been both down in the trenches and in front of the bench as a coach. He knows the game.

Discontent, blaming, complaining, self-pity cannot serve as a foundation for a good future, no matter how much effort you make.

No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.

What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon? And the day after that, and the next thirty years?

One has children in the expectation of dying before them. In fact, you want to make damn sure you die before them, just as you plant a tree or build a house knowing, hoping that it will outlive you. That’s how the human species has done as well as it has.

It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.

I will never retire unless I have to.

It’s when children are 15, 16 or 17 that they decide whether they want to be a doctor, an engineer, a politician or go to the Mars or moon. That is the time they start having a dream, and that’s the time you can work on them. You can help them shape their dreams.

I welcome and seek your ideas, but do not bring me small ideas; bring me big ideas to match our future.

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.

Have you ever asked yourselves what you are going to do when you grow up? In all likelihood you will get married, and before you know where you are, you will be mothers and fathers; and you will then be tied to a job, or to the kitchen, in which you will gradually wither away. Is that all that your life is going to be?

You can never plan the future by the past.

Football is big business – you can’t get away from it. But you have to separate that side from the playing.

My public is growing up just as I am. After all, I’m not 19 anymore and if I stick with the sex bit, who will be paying to see me when I’m 50?

No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.

The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter – for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way.

Our real problem, then, is not our strength today; it is rather the vital necessity of action today to ensure our strength tomorrow.

We can’t just continue living as if there was no tomorrow, because there is a tomorrow.

I’ve noticed a terrible thing, which is I will agree to anything if it’s far enough in the future.

An egg today is better than a hen to-morrow.

We have to rethink our whole energy approach, which is hard to do because we’re so dependent on oil, not just for fuel but also plastic. If plastic vanished, there would be total chaos. We have to think quite carefully about using oil and its derivatives, because it’s not going to be around forever.

We cannot always assure the future of our friends; we have a better chance of assuring our future if we remember who our friends are.

My justification is that most people my age spend a lot of time thinking about what they’re going to do for the next five or ten years. The time they spend thinking about their life, I just spend drinking.

In the long run, your human capital is your main base of competition. Your leading indicator of where you’re going to be 20 years from now is how well you’re doing in your education system.

The investor of today does not profit from yesterday’s growth.

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.

I’m trying to construct a world that maximises the probability that SpaceX continues its mission without me.

A lack of realism in the vision today costs credibility tomorrow.

We will burn that bridge when we come to it.

What’s amazing is, if young people understood how doing well in school makes the rest of their life so much interesting, they would be more motivated. It’s so far away in time that they can’t appreciate what it means for their whole life.

When I’m in my 50s, I kind of think I’ll want to be in a garden.

A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.

If you want to have sustained joy, you have to not only make sure that you think right, but you also have to make decisions now that are going to guarantee some joy in the future.

It needs time. Nobody wants to hear it, but that’s the truth: if you want to have success in the future, you have to be ready to work now.

When I’m in management meetings when we’re deciding my future, those decisions are left up to me. I’m the one who has to go out and fulfill all these obligations, so I should be able to choose which ones I do or not. That’s the part of my life where I feel most in control.

Legacy is a stupid thing! I don’t want a legacy.

If I don’t run for president, we’ll all be OK.

You can make a board for all the goals you want in your life with the pictures on it, and that’s great, daydreaming is wonderful, but you can never plan your future.

Only you can control your future.

No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.