Robert Hughes (1938–2012) Australian critic, historian, writer
Things I Didn't Know (2006)
My Life (1975), p. 231
Robert Hughes (1938–2012) Australian critic, historian, writer
Things I Didn't Know (2006)
“To enforce the lies of the present, it is necessary to erase the truths of the past.”
George Orwell book 1984
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
Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais
quote in one of Mondrian's Paris' sketchbooks; as cited in Two Mondrian sketchbooks 1912 - 1914, ed. Robert P. Welsh & J. M. Joosten, Amsterdam 1969 op. cit. (note 31), p. 44
1910's
Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer
A New Earth (2005)
Variant: Nothing ever happened in the past that can prevent you from being present now, and if the past cant prevent you from being present now, what power does it have?
Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
“History cannot be erased or altered. Because that would mean killing yourself.”
Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist
Source: 色彩を持たない多崎つくると、彼の巡礼の年
Pierre Trudeau (1919–2000) 15th Prime Minister of Canada
Defining liberalism at the 1968 Liberal leadership convention, as quoted in "History of the Liberal Party of Canada" (PDF at the Liberal Party website) http://web.archive.org/web/20070418135603/http://www.liberal.ca/pdf/docs/070417_lpc_history_en.pdf
“Memory is a snare, pure and simple; it alters, it subtly rearranges the past to fit the present.”
Mario Vargas Llosa (1936) Peruvian writer, politician, journalist, and essayist
Bernard Lown (1921–2021) American cardiologist developer of the DC defibrillator and the cardioverter, as well as a recipient of the…
A Prescription for Hope (1985)
Context: If we are to succeed, this vision must possess millions of people. We must convince each generation that they are but transient passengers on this planet earth. It does not belong to them. They are not free to doom generations yet unborn. They are not at liberty to erase humanity's past nor dim its future. Only life itself can lay claim to sacred continuity. The magnitude of the danger and its imminence must bring the human family together in common pursuit of peace denied throughout the century. On the threshold of a new millennium the achievement of world peace is no longer remote, for it is beckoned by the unleashing of the deepest spiritual forces embedded in humankind when threatened with extinction. The reason, the creativeness, and the courage that human beings possess foster an abiding faith that what humanity creates, humanity can and will control.
George MacDonald Fraser book Quartered Safe Out Here
Source: Quartered Safe Out Here (1992), p. xxiv.