Mark Twain on Prophecy

...prophecies which promise valuable things, desirable things, good things, worthy things, never come true. Prophecies of this kind are like wars fought in a good cause — they are so rare that they don't count.
— from "Comments on the Killing of 600 Moros," written circa 1906, collected in Mark Twain on the Damned Human Race, ed. Janet Smith, © 1962, Hill and Wang, New York.