Past Quotes
Forgiveness is letting go of the hope that the past can be changed.Oprah Winfrey
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
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
Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labors of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge.Cicero
Show us a man who never makes a mistake and we will show you a man who never makes anything. The capacity for occasional blundering is inseparable from the capacity to bring things to pass. The only men who are past the danger of making mistakes are the men who sleep at Greenwood.H. L. Wayland
History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.Napoleon Bonaparte
Women with pasts interest men... they hope history will repeat itself.Mae West
I have made good judgements in the Past. I have made good judgements in the Future.Dan Quayle
Whoso neglects learning in his youth, Loses the past and is dead for the future.Euripides
In order to be utterly happy the only thing necessary is to refrain from comparing this moment with other moments in the past, which I often did not fully enjoy because I was comparing them with other moments of the future.Andr Gide
Study the past if you would define the future.Confucius
Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.Albert Einstein
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.Carl Sandburg, Cornhuskers (1918) "Prairie".
The farther behind I leave the past, the closer I am to forging my own character.Isabelle Eberhardt
Every man is his own ancestor, and every man is his own heir. He devises his own future, and he inherits his own past.Frederick Henry Hedge
Critics are like pigs at the pastry cart.John Updike
Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response. Expelled from individual consciousness by the rush of change, history finds its revenge by stamping the collective unconsciousness with habits, values, expectations, dreams. The dialectic between past and future will continue to form our lives.Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
The greatest lesson we can learn from the past... is that freedom is at the core of every successful nation in the world.Frederick Chiluba
We must respect the past, and mistrust the present, if we wish to provide for the safety of the future.Jeseph Joubert
There has never been an age that did not applaud the past and lament the present.Lillian Eichler Watson
The President seems to extend executive privilege way out past the atmosphere. What he says is executive privilege is nothing but executive poppycock.Sam Ervin
Look not mournfully into the past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future, without fear.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
These days people seek knowledge, not wisdom. Knowledge is of the past, wisdom is of the future.Vernon Coope
Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and archive mythology of its past or of a past borrowed from other cultures. It tests its sense of identity, of regress or new achievement, against that past.George Steine
The past is but the beginning of a beginning.H. G. Wells
A generation which ignores history has no past and no future.Robert Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazurus Long
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
The ability to think straight, some knowledge of the past, some vision of the future, some skill to do useful service, some urge to fit that service into the well - Being of the community - These are the most vital things education must try to produce.Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve
Gratitude is born in hearts that take time to count up past mercies.Charles E. Jefferson
The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.Edward Thomas, Poems (1917) "Early One Morning".
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
Virtue extends our days: he live two lives who relives his past with pleasure.Marcus Valerius Martialis, Epigrams
The past is a source of knowledge, and the future is a source of hope. Love of the past implies faith in the future.Stephen Ambrose, in Fast Company
Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.Percy Bysshe Shelley
There are three classes into which all the women past seventy that ever I knew were to be divided 1. That dear old soul2. That old woman3. That old witch.Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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 that the hope of creating the future dominates the minds of those who control the teaching of the young.Bertrand Russell
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
