Past Quotes

God cannot alter the past, but historians can.

Samuel Butle

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana

The past is certain, the future obscure.

Thales

Far better to think historically, to remember the lessons of the past. Thus, far better to conceive of power as consisting in part of the knowledge of when not to use all the power you have. Far better to be one who knows that if you reserve the power not to use all your power, you will lead others far more successfully and well.

A. Bartlett Giamatti, President of Yale University

Traditionalists are pessimists about the future and optimists about the past.

Lewis Mumford

A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.

Sidney J. Harris

The future is a hundred thousand threads, but the past is a fabric that can never be rewoven.

Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

Sick I am of idle words, past all reconciling, Words that weary and perplex and pander and conceal, Wake the sounds that cannot lie, for all their sweet beguiling; The language one need fathom not, but only hear and feel.

George Du Maurie

For the first time in the history of our country the majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years.

James Earl Jimmy Carter, Jr.

Rash indeed is he who reckons on the morrow, or haply on days beyond it; for tomorrow is not, until today is past.

Sophocles, Trachiniae

Change is the law of life; and those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.

John F. Kennedy

To mature means to take responsibility for your life, to be on your own. Psychoanalysis fosters the infantile state by considering that the past is responsible for the illness.

Fritz Perls

Every advantage in the past is judged in the light of the final issue.

Demosthenes, First Olynthiac

Life is divided into three terms - That which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present to live better in the future.

William Wordsworth