1960s, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence (1967)
Context: A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
“Telling the truth about the past helps cause justice in the present.”
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James W. Loewen 17
American historian 1942Related quotes
“The success of SpaceShipOne was Justice Day for dreamers and pioneers past, present and future.”
Space: What love's got to do with it - The Space Review (2004)
“To enforce the lies of the present, it is necessary to erase the truths of the past.”
Attributed to Orwell by Keith Olbermann on MSNBC (27 September 2006), this seems to be a paraphrase of some of the statements in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Misattributed
Source: 1984
“The present is the necessary product of all the past, the necessary cause of all the future.”
What Is Religion? (1899) is Ingersoll's last public address, delivered before the American Free Religious association, Boston, June 2, 1899. Source: The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Dresden Memorial Edition Volume IV, pages 477-508, edited by Cliff Walker. http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/ingwhatrel.htm
Variant: The present is the child, and the necessary child, of all the past, and the mother of all the future.
Alan Dershowitz, The Best Defense (New York: Vintage), 1983-5-12, p. xiv.
1980s–1990s, Barbarians inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays (1999)