Past Quotes

Do not look back. And do not dream about the future, either. It will neither give you back the past, nor satisfy your other daydreams. Your duty, your reward - Your destiny - Are here and now.
Dag Hammarskjold, newpaper quote of the day
Thomas jefferson - i like the dreams of the future better than the...
Sam ervin - the president seems to extend executive privilege...
Reflect on your present blessings, of which every man has many; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
Charles Dickens
Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana
We live in the present, we dream of the future, but we learn eternal truths from the past.
Madame Chiang
Disconnecting from change does not recapture the past. It loses the future.
Kathleen Norris, O Magazine, January 2004
History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Nothing in all the world is so nonsensical and contradictory, save mortals, that is, who live in the grip of the superstitions of the past.
Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat
Bob dylan,
Geschichte ist... ein Dialog zwischen Gegenwart und Vergangenheit. re - Transl.: History is... a dialogue between the present and the past.
Edward Hallet Carr, Was ist Geschichte?, S. 54
Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present - which seldom happens to us.
Jean De La Bruyere
Leaders are the ones who keep faith with the past, keep step with the present and keep the promise to posterity.
Harold J. Seymore
We are a people who do not want to keep much of the past in our heads. It is considered unhealthy in America to remember mistakes, neurotic to think about them, psychotic to dwell on them.
Lillian Hellman
God cannot alter the past, but historians can.
Samuel Butle
I have had enough experience in all my years, and have read enough of the past, to know that advice to grandchildren is usually wasted.
Harry S Truman
There has never been an age that did not applaud the past and lament the present.
Lillian Eichler Watson
The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benedictions.
William Wordsworth
The future, according to some scientists, will be exactly like the past, only far more expensive.
John Sladek
Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.
Maya Angelou
Learn from the past, Hope for the future, Live in the present.
Ken Lancaste
To live in the past or in the future may be less satisfying than to live in the present, but it can never be as disillusioning.
R. D. Laing
It is because modern education is so seldom inspired by a great hope that it so seldom achieves great results. The wish to preserve the past rather than the hope of creating the future dominates the minds of those who control the teaching of the young.
Bertrand Russell
Gratitude is born in hearts that take time to count up past mercies.
Charles E. Jefferson
One must never lose time in vainly regretting the past or in complaining against the changes which cause us discomfort, for change is the essence of life.
Anatole France
Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.
Thomas Sowell, Is Reality Optional?, 1993
The mind of man is capable of anything - - Because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future.
Joseph Conrad
We think very little of time present; we anticipate the future, as being too slow, and with a view to hasten it onward, we recall the past to stay it as too swiftly gone. We are so thoughtless, that we thus wander through the hours which are not here, regardless only of the moment that is actually our own.
Blaise Pascal
The remarkable thing we have is a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.
Charles R. Swindoll
I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences.
Walt Whitman
These days people seek knowledge, not wisdom. Knowledge is of the past, wisdom is of the future.
Vernon Coope
You can never plan the future by the past.
Edmund Burke
My past is my wisdom to use today... my future is my wisdom yet to experience. Be in the present because that is where life resides.
Gene Oliver, Life and the Artistry of Change
The Past: Our cradle, not our prison; there is danger as well as appeal in its glamour. The past is for inspiration, not imitation, for continuation, not repetition.
Israel Zangwill
The future is a hundred thousand threads, but the past is a fabric that can never be rewoven.
Orson Scott Card, Xenocide
All of us, whether guilty or not, whether old or young, must accept the past. ... It is not a case of coming to terms with the past. That is not possible. It cannot be subsequently modified or undone.
Richard von Weizscke
The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealised past.
Robertson Davies, "A Voice from the Attic", 1960
You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.
Jan Glidewell
Most people live ninety percent in the past, seven percent in the present, and that only leaves three percent for the future.
John Steinbeck, The Winter of our Discontent
The Past Our cradle, not our prison there is danger as well as appeal in its glamor. The past is for inspiration, not imitation, for continuation, not repitition.
Israel Zangwill