You can never plan the future by the past.

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

I don’t like looking back. I’m always constantly looking forward. I’m not the one to sort of sit and cry over spilt milk. I’m too busy looking for the next cow.

I was a thug.

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

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

When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.

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?

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.

You simply have to put one foot in front of the other and keep going. Put blinders on and plow right ahead.

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

In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.

I owe everything to Nirvana. But I can’t let that overshadow the future. For the first few years, I didn’t even want to talk about Nirvana. Partly because it was just painful to talk about losing Kurt but also because I wanted the Foo Fighters to mean something.

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.

There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.

We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience.

Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.

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

See, when you drive home today, you’ve got a big windshield on the front of your car. And you’ve got a little bitty rearview mirror. And the reason the windshield is so large and the rearview mirror is so small is because what’s happened in your past is not near as important as what’s in 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.

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

We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.

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.

I don’t live in the past at all; I’m always wanting to do something new. I make a point of constantly trying to forget and get things out of my mind.

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

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

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

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

Only you can control your future.

I tend not to look back and dwell on a project once it is finished.

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

When there’s so much left to do, why spend your time focusing on things you’ve already done, counting trophies or telling stories about the good old days?

I will never retire unless I have to.

I don’t regret anything.

When you make a mistake and the devil comes and tells you ‚You’re no good,‘ you don’t have to take on the guilt and condemnation he wants to put on you. No! You can immediately confess your mistake to God, thank Him for forgiving you and cleansing you with the blood of Jesus, and move forward in the victory of His grace and forgiveness.

There are millions of Americans outside Washington who are tired of stale political arguments and are moving this country forward. They believe, and I believe, that here in America, our success should depend not on accident of birth, but the strength of our work ethic and the scope of our dreams.

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.

Take time to gather up the past so that you will be able to draw from your experience and invest them in the future.

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.

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.

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.

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.

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.

You have people come into your life shockingly and surprisingly. You have losses that you never thought you’d experience. You have rejection and you have learn how to deal with that and how to get up the next day and go on with it.

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.

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

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

What we have to find is the right level of regulation of our financial system so that it has the incentive to invest in things, but at the same time, it is sufficiently regulated so it can’t get in the kind of trouble that we have seen in the past and we have seen recently.

I used to get into a lot of fights.

I don’t look at my old work. I mean, they made nice books; the books were made without me, the one from last year and the one from this year. I – personally, I’m not interested in my own past. I’m only interested in today – perhaps tomorrow.

The future rewards those who press on. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I’m going to press on.

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.

I used to feel unsafe right in the moment of an accomplishment – I felt the ground fall from under my feet because this could be the end. And even now, while everyone is celebrating, I’m on to the next thing. I don’t want to get lost in this big cushion of success.

You’ll never get ahead of anyone as long as you try to get even with him.

Prejudice is a chain, it can hold you. If you prejudice, you can’t move, you keep prejudice for years. Never get nowhere with that.

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

It’s hard to be clear about who you are when you are carrying around a bunch of baggage from the past. I’ve learned to let go and move more quickly into the next place.

In this bright future you can’t forget your past.

Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.

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?

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