Sir

There comes a time when quotations should be laid to rest. Adam Rutherford, in his Book Review 'The future ain't what it used to be' (Nature 454, 1051; 2008), cites baseball legend 'Yogi' Berra as declaring that it's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.

Maybe he did, but maybe he didn't, or at least maybe he didn't do it first. The same observation has been attributed to numerous other people, including Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, Will Rogers, George Bernard Shaw, Winston Churchill, Groucho Marx, Enrico Fermi, Freeman Dyson, Cecil B. DeMille and even Confucius (http://www.larry.denenberg.com/predictions.html).