Quotes about the past
A collection of quotes on the topic of past, paste, future, use.
Best quotes about the past

“Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.”

“I like men who have a future and women who have a past.”

“Study the past if you would define the future.”

“No matter how hard the past, you can always begin again.”

“We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it.”
Quotes about the past

Source: https://www.peruinforma.com/entrevista-cultural-al-escritor-chileno-jose-baroja/

“We are what the past has made us. We are what the future will make us. Live now. Right now.”

The castle of Kmita and Lubomirski at Wiśnicz Nowy, "Aura" 2, 1991-02, p. 18-20. http://agro.icm.edu.pl/agro/element/bwmeta1.element.agro-bd5a073d-07bd-4353-9edc-6bf8ea3d43c5?q=de70f1df-826d-4538-9cee-535aa9902521$5&qt=IN_PAGE

Enchanted by beauty (three forgotten relations), "Aura" 1, 1998-01, p. 17-19. http://yadda.icm.edu.pl/yadda/element/bwmeta1.element.agro-article-d2f0773c-592e-4250-8f73-558234a9140e?q=3c417fdf-4051-4e84-83b2-9eb4fc33b1e0$1&qt=IN_PAGE

Weather anomalies in Poland's past, "Aura" 7, 1990-07, p. 6-8. http://yadda.icm.edu.pl/yadda/element/bwmeta1.element.agro-545c16f1-b48e-46e2-a0d2-6a4babeeeea0?q=89e2d267-8e35-4c74-b570-25a195714d27$8&qt=IN_PAGE

and that's not what I wanted.
The Michael Jackson Interview: The Footage You Were Never Meant to See (2002)

“The future's too bright to dwell on the past. Life moves fast, run faster.”

“This place makes me think about the mistakes I've made in the past… and I've made so many of them.”
To Yugao, about Obito's name engraved in the Memorial Stone


" Interview transcript: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/6d42ae3a-110b-11db-9a72-0000779e2340.html in: Financial Times, July 7, 2006

Variant: You build on failure. You use it as a stepping sone. Close the door on the past. You don't try to forget the mistakes, but you don't dwell on it. You don't let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.

Attributed to "Jimmy R." in Days of Healing, Days of Joy (1987)
Misattributed
Source: link https://books.google.com/books?id=7QNk4eNvS44C&pg=PA175&lpg=PA175&dq=%22days+of+healing+days+of+joy%22+%22jimmy+r%22&source=bl&ots=C-jAUVg8y8&sig=fB9m-eQ1IvtjJV6Ncz8mZ30RRHo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAGoVChMIrYnZyNDlyAIVV_5jCh07uQOs#v=onepage&q=%22days%20of%20healing%20days%20of%20joy%22%20%22jimmy%20r%22&f=false

"London Letter" (December 1944), in Partisan Review (Winter 1945)

Anthony Storr as quoted in The Observer (12 July 1970)
Misattributed

“The belly is an ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favors, it always wants more tomorrow.”
Source: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962)

A Means for Furthering Peace (1905)
Context: It is not a dream, it is a simple feat of scientific electrical engineering, only expensive — blind, faint-hearted, doubting world!... Humanity is not yet sufficiently advanced to be willingly led by the discover's keen searching sense. But who knows? Perhaps it is better in this present world of ours that a revolutionary idea or invention instead of being helped and patted, be hampered and ill-treated in its adolescence — by want of means, by selfish interest, pedantry, stupidity and ignorance; that it be attacked and stifled; that it pass through bitter trials and tribulations, through the heartless strife of commercial existence. So do we get our light. So all that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combated, suppressed — only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle.

“Past is dead
Future is uncertain;
Present is all you have,
So eat, drink and live merry.”

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

“The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.”

“A generation which ignores history has no past —and no future.”
Source: Time Enough for Love (1973)

“You have to know the past to understand the present.”

“There is neither Past nor Future. There is only the Present.”

Launch.com, November 2, 2000<!-- site no longer exists -->

“You can't undo the past but you can certainly not repeat it.”
US Magazine. Issue 249.

Interview for Sounds Magazine on 17 July 1982. [Armed Combat, Sounds Magazine, 17 July 1982]

“Each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand mediocre minds appointed to guard the past.”
As quoted in Optimum Sports Nutrition (1993) by Michael Colgan, p. 144
Nahj al-Balagha

If Prison Walls Could Speak (1972)

Tina Turner is a soul survivor http://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/music/141823/Tina-Turner-is-a-soul-survivor, Daily Express, 22th of November 2009

Interviewed by the "Chicago SEED", November 1968

Romans 11:33 http://www.jw.org/en/publications/bible/nwt/books/romans/11/, NWT
Epistle to the Romans
Context: O the depth of God’s riches and wisdom and knowledge! How unsearchable his judgments [are] and past tracing out his ways [are]! For “who has come to know Jehovah’s mind, or who has become his counselor?”

Source: Dramatis Personae (1864), Rabbi Ben Ezra, Line 121.
Context: Be there, for once and all,
Severed great minds from small,
Announced to each his station in the Past!
Was I, the world arraigned,
Were they, my soul disdained,
Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!
Now, who shall arbitrate?
Ten men love what I hate,
Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
Ten, who in ears and eyes
Match me: we all surmise,
They this thing, I that: whom shall my soul believe?

Physics and Philosophy (1958)
Context: Any concepts or words which have been formed in the past through the interplay between the world and ourselves are not really sharply defined with respect to their meaning: that is to say, we do not know exactly how far they will help us in finding our way in the world. We often know that they can be applied to a wide range of inner or outer experience, but we practically never know precisely the limits of their applicability. This is true even of the simplest and most general concepts like "existence" and "space and time". Therefore, it will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth.
The concepts may, however, be sharply defined with regard to their connections. This is actually the fact when the concepts become part of a system of axioms and definitions which can be expressed consistently by a mathematical scheme. Such a group of connected concepts may be applicable to a wide field of experience and will help us to find our way in this field. But the limits of the applicability will in general not be known, at least not completely.

“I love to live in the past, with a little hope for the future… ”

Original: (uk) Кожен мій ранок починається з sms-повідомлення. Це sms від Генерального штабу. За минулу добу обстрілів – сім, втрат – дві. Цифри можуть бути різними, але тільки одна робить ранок добрим. Це – нуль. Обстрілів – нуль. Втрат – нуль.
Transliteration: Kozhen miy ranok pochynayetʹsya z sms-povidomlennya. Tse sms vid Heneralʹnoho shtabu. Za mynulu dobu obstriliv – sim, vtrat – dvi. Tsyfry mozhutʹ buty riznymy, ale tilʹky odna robytʹ ranok dobrym. Tse – nulʹ. Obstriliv – nulʹ. Vtrat – nulʹ.
Speech by Zelensky during the celebration of Independence Day of Ukraine https://www.ukrinform.ua/rubric-society/2766331-promova-zelenskogo-z-nagodi-28i-ricnici-nezaleznosti-ukraini.html (24 August 2019)
2005

Source: Katrín Jakobsdóttir (2021) cited in: " Iceland's left-right coalition takes office for second term https://www.dw.com/en/icelands-left-right-coalition-takes-office-for-second-term/a-59962630" in DW, December 2021.

Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence

“If you live to be one hundred, you've got it made. Very few people die past that age.”

“Sooner or later we've all got to let go of our past.”
Source: Deception Point
Source: Story of O

“My past is everything I failed to be.”
O meu passado é tudo quanto não consegui ser.
Source: The Book of Disquietude, trans. Richard Zenith, text 100

“In some lost fold of the past, we wanted to be lions and we're no more than castrated cats”
Source: The Savage Detectives

“There is no present or future-only the past, happening over and over again-now.”
Source: A Moon for the Misbegotten

“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

“My past, O Lord, to Your mercy; my present, to Your love; my future to Your providence.”

“I was weeping again, drunk on the impossible past.”

Variant: People see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is and the future less resolved than it’ll be.

“The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries.”

As quoted in "Clemente Says He is Very Happy" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=42oeAAAAIBAJ&sjid=QckEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1983%2C4221206 by the Associated Press, in The Daytona Beach Morning Journal (October 16, 1971), p. 1-C
Other, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1971</big>

Address at Oyster Bay, New York (27 July 1904) http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/images/research/txtspeeches/104.txt, in response to the committee appointed to notify him of his nomination for the Presidency.
1900s

“THE best way to suppose what may come, is to remember what is past.”
Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections
Variant: THE best way to suppose what may come, is to remember what is past.

"As I Please," Tribune (4 February 1944)<sup> http://alexpeak.com/twr/hiwbtw/</sup>
As I Please (1943–1947)

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1845/mar/17/agricultural-interest in the House of Commons (17 March 1845).
1840s