Brain work will cause women to go bald
- BERLIN PROFESSOR, 1914

I'm sorry, Mr Kipling, but you just don't know how to use the English language
- THE SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER, rejecting a submission by Rudyard Kipling in 1889

In all likelihood world inflation is over
- INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND CEO, 1959

You wouldn't want to be in an airplane, you wouldn't want to be in an elevator, and you wouldn't want to be in a hospital... contingency plans need to be put into place to minimize the harm from widespread failures
- Sen. CHRIS DODD, Year 2000 Tech Committee Senate Hearings into the Millennium Bug, June 12, 1998

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

Edmund Stoiber is going to be [Germany's] new Prime Minister
- LAWRENCE KUDLOW, The McLaughlin Group, Aug. 10, 2002

[By 1985], machines will be capable of doing any work Man can do
- HERBERT A. SIMON, of Carnegie Mellon University - considered to be a founder of the field of artificial intelligence - speaking in 1965

The future, according to some scientists, will be exactly like the past, only far more expensive
- JOHN SLADEK

Men might as well project a voyage to the Moon as attempt to communicate electronically across or under the stormy North Atlantic Ocean
- Dr DIONYSYS LARDER (1793-1859), professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, University College London

Very interesting Whittle, my boy, but it will never work
- CAMBRIDGE AERONAUTICS PROFESSOR, when shown Frank Whittle's plan for the jet engine

Dewey Defeats Truman
- CHICAGO TRIBUNE, Nov. 4, 1948 after the convincing re-election of President Truman to office

The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty - a fad
- The president of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford's lawyer not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903

Space travel is utter bilge
- RICHARD VAN DER RIET WOOLLEY, upon assuming the post of Astronomer Royal in 1956

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

Sure-fire rubbish
- LAWRENCE GILMAN, reviewing Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin in the New York Herald Tribune, 1935

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
- ERNEST RUTHERFORD, shortly after splitting the atom for the first time

By the year 1982 the graduated income tax will have practically abolished major differences in wealth
- IRWIN EDMAN, professor of philosophy Columbia University, 1932

Sterility may be inherited
- PACIFIC RURAL NEWS

And for the tourist who really wants to get away from it all, safaris in Vietnam
- NEWSWEEK, predicting popular holidays for the late 1960s

I think there is a world market for maybe five computers
- THOMAS WATSON, chairman of IBM, 1943 on seeing the first mainframe computer

The Christian Coalition [has] speculated that President Clinton might use the chaos that Y2k unleashes as an opportunity to seize dictatorial powers
- TIME, Jan. 18, 1999

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

640K ought to be enough for anybody
- BILL GATES, speculating about the RAM needs of computer users

Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical (sic) and insignificant, if not utterly impossible
- SIMON NEWCOMB (1835-1916), The Wright Brothers flew at Kittyhawk 18 months later. Newcomb was not impressed

We don't like their sound. Groups of guitars are on the way out
- UNNAMED DECCA EXECUTIVE, turning down the Beatles in 1962

Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau
- IRVING FISHER, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929

I would say that this does not belong to the art which I am in the habit of considering music
- A OULIBICHEFF, reviewing Beethoven's Fifth Symphony

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

Everything that can be invented, has been invented
- CHARLES DUELL, US commissioner of patents, 1899

You better get secretarial work or get married
- EMMELINE SNIVELY, director of the Blue Book Book Modelling Modelling Agency advising would be model Marilyn Monroe in 1944

A short-lived satirical pulp
- TIME, writing off Mad magazine in 1956. Mad is still going. (So is TIME)

Radio has no future
- LORD KELVIN, Scottish mathematician and physicist, former president of the Royal Society, 1897

If Beethoven's Seventh Symphony is not by some means abridged, it will soon fall into disuse
- PHILIP HALE, Boston Music Critic, 1837

The world to an end shall come; in nineteen hundred and ninety-one
- OLD MOTHER SHIPTON, 16th century English mystic (an earlier Shipton transcription gave the date for Doomsday as 1981)

I think the biggest story on election night is going to be Jeb Bush's loss in this race
- CRAIG CRAWFORD, Hardball, MSNBC, Oct. 18, 2002

Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?
- H. M. WARNER, Warner Brothers, 1927, pouring cold water on the future of the new-fangled 'talkies'

Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy
- DRILLERS, who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.

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 1901

Computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps only weigh one-and-a-half tons
- POPULAR MECHANICS MAGAZINE, getting it spectacularly wrong in 1949 (but then one of the first computers was called a bomb!)

The future will be better tomorrow
- DAN QUAYLE, getting to the point

[Bin Laden] will be confirmed dead by New Years' Eve
- PAT BUCHANAN, The McLaughlin Group, October 5, 2001

You ain't going nowhere son - you ought to go back to drivin' a truck
- JIM DENNY, manager of the Grand Ole Opry, on firing Elvis Presley after one performance in 1954

Nearly all experts agree that bacterial and viral diseases will have been virtually wiped out [by the year 2000]
- TIME, 1982

Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future
- NIELS BOHR, Nobel Laureate

Those who have knowledge don't predict. Those who predict don't have knowledge
- LAO TZU, 6th century B.C.