The future is uncertain but the end is always near.

The line is widely associated with Jim Morrison through The Doors’ 1969 song “Roadhouse Blues,” which opens with the lyric “The future’s uncertain and the end is always near.” It emerged during a period when Morrison’s writing and performances often dwelt on mortality, risk, and the limits of control—themes intensified by the late-1960s counterculture’s sense of volatility and impending collapse. In performance, the phrase functions less as a literal prediction than as a mood-setting credo: a blunt reminder that life’s direction cannot be secured, while death (or endings of various kinds) remains inevitable and close at hand.

The quote juxtaposes two kinds of not-knowing: the future is open, contingent, and impossible to map, yet the “end” is certain in principle and psychologically “near” in experience. Morrison’s phrasing turns existential anxiety into a call for immediacy—if outcomes can’t be guaranteed, then intensity, presence, and authenticity become rational responses. The line also carries an apocalyptic undertone typical of Morrison’s imagery: history and personal life feel poised on a brink. Its power lies in compressing fatalism and urgency into a single sentence, making uncertainty itself a reason to live more vividly.

“The future’s uncertain and the end is always near.”