Past Quotes

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

Demosthenes, First Olynthiac

Never let a stain from the past put a mark on your future.

Jillian Graham, Chicken Soup for the Preteen Soul

There has never been an age that did not applaud the past and lament the present.

Lillian Eichler Watson

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Thse who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana

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

Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

You can never plan the future by the past.

Edmund Burke

Reflect on your present blessings, of which every man has many; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

Charles Dickens

While I take inspiration from the past, like most Americans, I live for the future.

Ronald Reagan

History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.

Napoleon Bonaparte

The past is a guide post, not a hitching post.

L. Thomas Holdcroft

Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Forbes Book of Business Quotations

It is past all controversy that what costs dearest is, and ought to be, most valued.

Miguel de Cervantes

History repeats itself and history never repeats itself are about equally trueWe never know enough about the infinitely complex circumstances of any past event to prophesy the future by analogy.

George Macaulay Trevelyan