“When the past is forgotten, the present is unforgettable”

— Martin Amis , book Other People

Source: Other People

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Martin Amis 136

Welsh novelist 1949

Flora Rheta Schreiber (1918–1988) American journalist

Source: Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities

“There are those who regard this history of past strife and exile as better forgotten. But, to use the phrase of Yeats, let us not casually reduce "that great past to a trouble of fools." For we need not feel the bitterness of the past to discover its meaning for the present and the future.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Speech to a joint session of the Dail and the Seanad, Dublin, Ireland (28 June 1963)
1963

“Best not to mix the past with the present. The present paints the past with gold. The past paints the present with lead.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

“You will only look for past events when the present is unsatisfactory. The secret to enjoying the present moment is to make it more satisfying than the past. Go beyond the limits.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“It is not easy to be wise for all times, not event for the present much less for the future; and those who judge the past must recollect that, when it was the present the present was future”

Gouverneur Morris (1752–1816) American politician

Gouverneur Morris to Robert Walsh ( February 5, 1811 http://www.bgdlegal.com/clientuploads/Publications/Publications/John%20Bush%20-%20Gouverneur%20Morris.pdf)
1810s

“For all three of us, the Caracalla concert was a major event in our lives. I hope I am not immodest to think it was also unforgettable for most of the people who were present.”

Luciano Pavarotti (1935–2007) Italian operatic tenor

On the 1990 "Three Tenors" concert in Rome, Italy, with Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras
Pavarotti : My World (1995)

“The real is the present, conceived not as a mathematical point between the present and the past, but as the union of present and past in a duration or permanence that is at the same time change. Thus the past as past and the future as future do not exist at all, but are purely ideal; the past as living in the present and the future as germinating in the present are wholly real and indeed are just the present itself. It is because of the presence of these two elements in the present… that the present is a concrete and changing reality and not an empty mathematical point.”

R. G. Collingwood (1889–1943) British historian and philosopher

Source: "Some Perplexities about time: with an attempted solution" (1925), p. 149. as cited in: Jonathan Gorman, "The transmission of our understanding of historical time." Historia Social y de la Educación 1.2 (2012): 129-152.

“Wine is a great danger, especially because it doesn't bring truth to the surface. Anything but the truth, indeed: it reveals especially the past and forgotten history of the individual rather than his present wish; it capriciously flings into the light also all the half-baked ideas with which in a more or less recent period one has toyed and then forgotten.”

Italo Svevo book Zeno's Conscience

Il vino è un grande pericolo specie perché non porta a galla la verità. Tutt'altro che la verità anzi: rivela dell'individuo specialmente la storia passata e dimenticata e non la sua attuale volontà; getta capricciosamente alla luce anche tutte le ideucce con le quali in epoca più o meno recente ci si baloccò e che si è dimenticate.
Source: La coscienza di Zeno (1923), P. 194; p. 232.

“The past can be told as it truly is, not was. For recounting the past is a social act of the present done by men of the present and affecting the social system of the present.”

Immanuel Wallerstein (1930–2019) economic historian

Wallerstein (1974) The modern world system capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world economy in the sixteenth century. New York: Academic Press.

“There have been times, lately, when I dearly wished that I could change the past. Well, I can’t, but I can change the present, so that when it becomes the past it will turn out to be a past worth having.”

Terry Pratchett book I Shall Wear Midnight

Source: I Shall Wear Midnight

“When the past is forgotten, the present is unforgettable”

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