Quotes about the past (4327 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Comparing Iran and Iraq is like mistaking an apple for an orange! In any case, we are not asking for foreign intervention, which would be counter-productive. When after September 11, America discovered that they had a problem with Saddam Hussein, they forgot who was the main guilty party for fanaticism and radicalism. For the past 27 years the whole world has been sending fire fighters to put out the blazes. Some day or other, someone will have to take on the person who has the tinderbox: the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Reza Pahlavi (1960) Last crown prince of the former Imperial State of Iran

As quoted by Luc de Barochez, Reza Pahlavi : «Lançons une campagne de désobéissance civile» http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/20060608.FIG000000177_reza_pahlavi_lancons_une_campagne_de_desobeissance_civile.html, June 8, 2006.
Interviews, 2006

World , Problem , Personality

“When you speak in His presence about your past sins, He does not even understand your language. Only the present and the future have any interest for Him... I have committed crimes and have blood on my conscience. I told Jesus about it again and again. But because He had long ago washed all this away, there was no possibility of communication between us. He did not understand what I was talking about.”

Richard Wurmbrand (1909–2001) Romanian Christian minister of Jewish descent

If Prison Walls Could Speak (1972)

Communication , Understanding , Future

“I am not very impressed with theological arguments whatever they may be used to support. Such arguments have often been found unsatisfactory in the past.”

Alan Turing Computing Machinery and Intelligence

Source: Computing Machinery and Intelligence (1950), pp. 443-444.
Context: I am not very impressed with theological arguments whatever they may be used to support. Such arguments have often been found unsatisfactory in the past. In the time of Galileo it was argued that the texts, "And the sun stood still... and hasted not to go down about a whole day" (Joshua x. 13) and "He laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not move at any time" (Psalm cv. 5) were an adequate refutation of the Copernican theory.

Support

“Nay farther, even with relation to that succession, we cou'd only admit of those perceptions, which are immediately present to our consciousness, nor cou'd those lively images, with which the memory presents us, be ever receiv'd as true pictures of past perceptions. The memory, senses, and understanding are, therefore, all of them founded on the imagination, or the vivacity of our ideas.”

David Hume book A Treatise of Human Nature

Part 4, Section 7
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 1: Of the understanding
Context: I am first affrighted and confounded with that forelorn solitude, in which I am plac'd in my philosophy, and fancy myself some strange uncouth monster, who not being able to mingle and unite in society, has been expell'd all human commerce, and left utterly abandon'd and disconsolate. Fain wou'd I run into the crowd for shelter and warmth; but cannot prevail with myself to mix with such deformity. I call upon others to join me, in order to make a company apart; but no one will hearken to me. Every one keeps at a distance, and dreads that storm, which beats upon me from every side. I have expos'd myself to the enmity of all metaphysicians, logicians, mathematicians, and even theologians; and can I wonder at the insults I must suffer? I have declar'd my disapprobation of their systems; and can I be surpriz'd, if they shou'd express a hatred of mine and of my person? When I look abroad, I foresee on every side, dispute, contradiction, anger, calumny and detraction. When I turn my eye inward, I find nothing but doubt and ignorance. All the world conspires to oppose and contradict me; tho' such is my weakness, that I feel all my opinions loosen and fall of themselves, when unsupported by the approbation of others. Every step I take is with hesitation, and every new reflection makes me dread an error and absurdity in my reasoning.
For with what confidence can I venture upon such bold enterprises, when beside those numberless infirmities peculiar to myself, I find so many which are common to human nature? Can I be sure, that in leaving all established opinions I am following truth; and by what criterion shall I distinguish her, even if fortune shou'd at last guide me on her foot-steps? After the most accurate and exact of my reasonings, I can give no reason why I shou'd assent to it; and feel nothing but a strong propensity to consider objects strongly in that view, under which they appear to me. Experience is a principle, which instructs me in the several conjunctions of objects for the past. Habit is another principle, which determines me to expect the same for the future; and both of them conspiring to operate upon the imagination, make me form certain ideas in a more intense and lively manner, than others, which are not attended with the same advantages. Without this quality, by which the mind enlivens some ideas beyond others (which seemingly is so trivial, and so little founded on reason) we cou'd never assent to any argument, nor carry our view beyond those few objects, which are present to our senses. Nay, even to these objects we cou'd never attribute any existence, but what was dependent on the senses; and must comprehend them entirely in that succession of perceptions, which constitutes our self or person. Nay farther, even with relation to that succession, we cou'd only admit of those perceptions, which are immediately present to our consciousness, nor cou'd those lively images, with which the memory presents us, be ever receiv'd as true pictures of past perceptions. The memory, senses, and understanding are, therefore, all of them founded on the imagination, or the vivacity of our ideas.

Imagination , Idea , Understanding , Sense

“However doomed a man may be, he still has the great luxury of freedom of thought that can carry him soaring over the past and the future, the single attribute that can never be taken away by tyrant or circumstance.”

Dmitri Volkogonov (1928–1995) Russian military officer (colonel-general) and historian

Volkogonov
Dmitri
1996
Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutionary
Free Press, Simon and Schuster
https://books.google.com/books?id=3dCc5Ovw4sUC&pg=PA409#v=onepage&f=false
9780684822938
.

Freedom , Future

“Misunderstanding of the present is the inevitable consequence of ignorance of the past. But a man may wear himself out just as fruitlessly in seeking to understand the past, if he is totally ignorant of the present…This faculty of understanding the living is, in very truth, the master quality of the historian.”

Marc Bloch (1886–1944) French historian, medievalist, and historiographer

The Historian's Craft, pg.43

Truth , Understanding

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

Tom Hiddleston (1981) English actor, producer and musical performer

Making love , Future

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

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

Men , Books , Reading

“Let us stand on the scaffold of history — if hang we must — like the martyrs of Nuremberg, tall and proud! Is life so sweet, is comfort so precious and a job in a Jewish counting house so sacred that we are AFRAID to grasp the mighty hand of ADOLF HITLER reaching down to us our of our glorious past?”

George Lincoln Rockwell (1918–1967) American politician, founder of the American Nazi Party

In Hoc Signo Vinces
1960, In Hoc Signo Vinces

Life , History , Housing

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Future

“This is nihilism; or this is truth. He has to push past his boundaries. There is the outline of a body, distinct, separate, its integrity an illusion, a tragic deception, because un seen there is a slit between the legs, and he has to push into it. There is never a real privacy of the body that can coexist withe intercourse: with being entered. The vagina itself is muscled and the muscles have to be pushed apart. The thrusting is persistent invasion. She is opened up, split down the center. She is occupied - physically, internally, in her privacy.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Source: Intercourse (1987), Chapter 7, "Occupation/Collaboration"

Truth

“The chain of young life is broken,
The journey is ended, the hour has struck, it is time to leave,
Time to go where there is no future,
No past, no eternity, no years;
Where there are no expectations, no passions,
No bitter tears, no fame, no honour;
Where memory sleeps deeply
And the heart in its narrow coffin home
Does not feel the worm gnawing it.”

Mikhail Lermontov (1814–1841) Russian writer, poet and painter

"Death" (1830 or 1831)
Poems

Life , Feeling , Home , Tear

“I put a lot of mannequins in my room in the past, and I still have mannequins in my room, because I used to be very lonely, painfully lonely. You have no idea. I used to walk the streets looking for people to talk to. I'm talking about the height of one's career…. I would walk up to them, strangers, and say, "will you be my friend?" They'd go, "my god, Michael Jackson!"”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

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

God , People , Idea

“What is life? Life is like a big obstacle, put in front of your optical to slow you down, and every time you think you gotten past it, it's gonna come back around and tackle you to the damn ground. What are friends? Friends are people that you think are your friends, but they're really your enemies with secret identities and disguises to hide their true colors, so just when you're close enough to be brothers, they wanna come back and cut your throat when you ain't looking. What is money? Money is what makes a man act funny. Money is the root of all evil. Money'll make them same friends come back around swearing that they was always down. What is life? I'm tired of life!”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"'If I Had" (Track 6).
1990s, The Slim Shady LP (1999)

Life , Money , People , Secret

“By the end of the Second World War, every American past the age of 40 had been subjected to some 25 years of anti-communist radiation, the average incubation period needed to produce a malignancy. Anti-communism had developed a life of its own.”

William Blum (1933–2018) American author and historian

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Introduction

Life , War , Age , World

“For myself the past is the source (for all art is vitally contemporary).”

Cy Twombly (1928–2011) American painter

1950 - 1960
Source: 'Editions du Regard', January 1952, p.13; as quoted in 'A monograph', M. Whittall, London,Thames & Hudson, 2005ns du Regard. p. 9

Art

“Philosophy triumphs easily over past and future evils; but present evils triumph over it.”

François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

La philosophie triomphe aisément des maux passés et des maux à venir. Mais les maux présents triomphent d'elle.
Maxim 22. Compare: "This same philosophy is a good horse in the stable, but an arrant jade on a journey", Oliver Goldsmith, The Good-Natured Man, Act i.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Evil , Future

“Always choose the future over the past. What do we do now?”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

Source: Create Your Own Future: How to Master the 12 Critical Factors of Unlimited Success

Future

“Before explaining these methods let us recall exactly the conditions of the problem which we are attempting to solve. Our purpose is to be able to measure the intellectual capacity of a child who is brought to us in order to know whether he is normal or retarded. We should therefore, study his condition at the time and that only. We have nothing to do either with his past history or with his future; consequently we shall neglect his etiology, and we shall make no attempt to distinguish between acquired and congenital idiocy; for a stronger reason we shall set aside all consideration of pathological anatomy which might explain his intellectual deficiency. So much for his past. As to that which concerns his future, we shall exercise the same abstinence; we do not attempt to establish or prepare a prognosis and we leave unanswered the question of whether this retardation is curable, or even improvable. We shall limit ourselves to ascertaining the truth in regard to his present mental state.”

Alfred Binet (1857–1911) French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test

Source: The development of intelligence in children, 1916, p. 37 : lead paragraph of "New Methods for the Diagnosis of the Intellectual Level of Subnormals"

Truth , Exercises , History , Question

“When making the analysis of matter we impliedly admitted two propositions: first, that sensation is the tertium quid which is interposed between the excitant of our sensory nerves and ourselves; secondly, that the aggregate of our sensations is all we can know of the outer world, so that it is correct to define this last as the collection of our present, past, and possible sensations.”

Alfred Binet (1857–1911) French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test

Source: The Mind and the Brain, 1907, p. 60; Definition of sensation

World

“The world is but an assembly of present, past, and possible sensations; the affair of science is to analyze and co-ordinate them by separating their accidental from their constant relations.”

Alfred Binet (1857–1911) French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test

Source: The Mind and the Brain, 1907, p. 27

World , Science

“Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Variant: Who was it who said that forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a different past?
Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

Hope , Forgiveness

“I think of the northern country, the United States, where they are specialists, very good at what they do, but sometimes, many times, they have no memory of the things that have happened, because they are so interested in raising money that the past is blurred and give meaning to ignorance on the basis of consumption.”

José Baroja (1983) Chilean author and editor

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

Money , Thinking , Memory , Time

“Where we used to see a panorama of wars and strutting kings and court harlots, we now see the struggle of the people to wrest a living from nature and to shake off their oppressors. The new present has created a new past. The French Revolution was the birth of modern democracy, and also of the modern school of history.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.2 The Social Aims of Jesus, p. 45
Context: We are to-day in the midst of a revolutionary epoch fully as thorough as that of the Renaissance and Reformation. It is accompanied by a reinterpretation of nature and of history. The social movement has helped to create the modern study of history. Where we used to see a panorama of wars and strutting kings and court harlots, we now see the struggle of the people to wrest a living from nature and to shake off their oppressors. The new present has created a new past. The French Revolution was the birth of modern democracy, and also of the modern school of history.

War , People , School , Democracy

“He who spends time regretting the past loses the present and risks the future.”

Francisco de Quevedo (1584–1645) Spanish writer

Time , Future

“Fundamental to this idea of art (conceptual art) is the understanding of the linguistic nature of all art propositions, be they past or present, and regardless of the elements used in their construction.”

Joseph Kosuth (1945) American conceptual artist

note: Without this understanding a 'conceptual' form of presentation is little more than a manufactured stylehood, and such art we have with increasing abundance.
'Joseph Kosuth: Introductory note by the American editor', in Art-Language Vol.1 Nr.2, Art & Language Press, Chipping Norton (February 1970), p.3.

Art , Idea , Understanding , Nature

“Fundamental to this idea of art (conceptual art) is the understanding of the linguistic nature of all art propositions, be they past or present, and regardless of the elements used in their construction. (note: Without this understanding a 'conceptual' form of presentation is little more than a manufactured stylehood, and such art we have with increasing abundance.)”

Joseph Kosuth (1945) American conceptual artist

'Joseph Kosuth: Introductory note by the American editor', in Art-Language Vol.1 Nr.2, Art & Language Press, Chipping Norton (February 1970), p.3.

Art , Idea , Understanding , Nature

“It is necessary to separate aesthetics from art because aesthetics deals with opinions on perception of the world in general. In the past one of the two prongs of art’s function was its value as decoration. So any branch of philosophy that dealt with “beauty” and thus, taste, was inevitably duty bound to discuss art as well. Out of this “habit” grew the notion that there was a conceptual connection between art and aesthetics, which is not true. This idea never drastically conflicted with artistic considerations before recent times, not only because the morphological characteristics of art perpetuated the continuity of this error, but as well, because the apparent other “functions” of art (depiction of religious themes, portraiture of aristocrats, detailing of architecture, etc.) used art to cover up art.”

Joseph Kosuth (1945) American conceptual artist

Art after Philosophy, 1969

World , Beauty , Art , Error

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

Alexander Rybak (1986) Norwegian singer, actor, violinist, composer, pianist

Love , Hope , Future

“Our enemies are Medes and Persians, men who for centuries have lived soft and luxurious lives; we of Macedon for generations past have been trained in the hard school of danger and war.”

Alexander the Great (-356–-323 BC) King of Macedon

Addressing his troops prior to the Battle of Issus, as quoted in Anabasis Alexandri by Arrian Book II, 7
Context: Our enemies are Medes and Persians, men who for centuries have lived soft and luxurious lives; we of Macedon for generations past have been trained in the hard school of danger and war. Above all, we are free men, and they are slaves. There are Greek troops, to be sure, in Persian service — but how different is their cause from ours! They will be fighting for pay — and not much of at that; we, on the contrary, shall fight for Greece, and our hearts will be in it. As for our foreign troops — Thracians, Paeonians, Illyrians, Agrianes — they are the best and stoutest soldiers in Europe, and they will find as their opponents the slackest and softest of the tribes of Asia. And what, finally, of the two men in supreme command? You have Alexander, they — Darius!

Men , War , School , Training

“Since it is always the same person whose mind thinks, wills, and judges, the autonomous nature of these activities has created great difficulties. Reason’s inability to move the will, plus the fact that thinking can only “understand” what is past what neither remove it nor “rejuvenate it” … have led to the various doctrines asserting the mind’s impotence and the force of the irrational, in brief to Hume’s famous dictum that “Reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions,” that is, to a rather simple-minded reversal of the Platonic notion of reason’s uncontested rulership in the household of the soul. What is so remarkable in all these theories and doctrines is their implicit monism, the claim that behind the obvious multiplicity of the world’s appearances and, even more pertinently to our context, behind the obvious plurality of man’s faculties and abilities, there must exist a oneness — the old hen pan, “the all is one””

Hannah Arendt book The Life of the Mind

either a single source or a single ruler.
Source: The Life of the Mind (1971/1978), p. 70.

World , Soul , Understanding , Nature

“Tattoos are interesting, but at the same time they are also a mask – you are exhibiting your past life on your body.”

Keanu Reeves (1964) Canadian actor, director, producer and musician

Life , Time , Tattoo

“Thank you for your kind invitation. As someone who has enjoyed visiting Russia in the past and can also claim a degree of Russian ancestry, it would make me happy to say yes. However, as a gay man, I must decline. I am deeply troubled by the current attitude toward and treatment of gay men and women by the Russian government. The situation is in no way acceptable, and I cannot in good conscience participate in a celebratory occasion hosted by a country where people like myself are being systematically denied their basic right to live and love openly. Perhaps, when and if circumstances improve, I'll be free to make a different choice.”

Wentworth Miller (1972) British-born American actor

Seth Adam (GLAAD's Senior Manager of Communications), Miller rejects Russian film festival invitation; 'As a gay man, I must decline' http://www.glaad.org/blog/wentworth-miller-rejects-russian-film-festival-invitation-gay-man-i-must-decline, Glaad.org, 21 Aug 2013.

Love , Women , Men , Happiness

“I'll go out on a limb and say that that glow arose from his past.”

José Baroja book No fue un catorce de febrero y otros cuentos

“…the walls of his house were full of images of a happy past, which in his mind seemed like a constant outside of time.”

José Baroja book El curioso caso de la sombra que murió como un recuerdo y otros cuentos

Happiness , Time , Housing

“Simpletons talk of the past, wise men of the present, and fools of the future.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

Men , Fools , Future

“As the past century was the century of capitalist power, the twentieth century is the century of power and glory of labour.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

Four Speeches on the Corporate State, Rome, (1935) pp. 39-40. Speech delivered to the workers in Milan. Eric Jabbari, Pierre Laroque and the Welfare State in Postwar France, Oxford University Press, (2012) p. 46
Context: Fascism establishes the real equality of individuals before the nation… the object of the regime in the economic field is to ensure higher social justice for the whole of the Italian people… What does social justice mean? It means work guaranteed, fair wages, decent homes, it means the possibility of continuous evolution and improvement. Nor is this enough. It means that the workers must enter more and more intimately into the productive process and share its necessary discipline… As the past century was the century of capitalist power, the twentieth century is the century of power and glory of labour.

“The whole day was strange, stunning, and it was a shattering experience. The past was disappearing, as if it had never belonged to me, as if I had read about it somewhere, as if I had dreamed about it, as if it was somebody else's story I have heard and somebody told it to me. I was becoming loose from my past, I was being uprooted from my history, I was losing my autobiography. I was becoming a non-being, what Buddha calls anatta. Boundaries were disappearing, distinctions were disappearing.”

Rajneesh (1931–1990) Godman and leader of the Rajneesh movement

The Discipline Of Transcendence (1978)

Dreams , History , Reading

“I would like that what I am doing is not lost. So I am trying in every possible way to drop all those things which in the past have been barriers for the revolution to continue and grow.”

Rajneesh (1931–1990) Godman and leader of the Rajneesh movement

Source: The Last Testament : Interviews with the World Press (1986)
Context: I would like that what I am doing is not lost. So I am trying in every possible way to drop all those things which in the past have been barriers for the revolution to continue and grow. I don't want anybody to stand between the individual and existence. No prayer, no priest... you alone are enough to face the sunrise, you don't need somebody to interpret for you what a beautiful sunrise it is... And this is my attitude: you are here, every individual is here, the whole existence is available. All that you need is just to be silent and listen to existence. There is no need of any religion, there is no need of any God, there is no need of any priesthood, there is no need of any organization. I trust in the individual categorically. Nobody up to now has trusted in the individual in such a way.

Way

“You might be surprised to find this out, but sweets were a big problem for me when I was younger. It didn't matter what it was, I couldn't walk past it without buying it. Now I've cut sweets out. It actually took me several years to get to this point. Now I don't really like sweets anymore.”

Robert Lewandowski (1988) Polish association football player

"Lewandowski exclusive, pt II: 'We're stronger now'" https://www.bundesliga.com/en/news/Bundesliga/noblmd09-fc-bayern-muenchen-robert-lewandowski-exclusive-interview.jsp (2016)

Problem

“Every form of catechesis would do well to attend to the “way of beauty” (via pulchritudinis). Proclaiming Christ means showing that to believe in and to follow him is not only something right and true, but also something beautiful, capable of filling life with new splendour and profound joy, even in the midst of difficulties. Every expression of true beauty can thus be acknowledged as a path leading to an encounter with the Lord Jesus. This has nothing to do with fostering an aesthetic relativism which would downplay the inseparable bond between truth, goodness and beauty, but rather a renewed esteem for beauty as a means of touching the human heart and enabling the truth and goodness of the Risen Christ to radiate within it. If, as Saint Augustine says, we love only that which is beautiful, the incarnate Son, as the revelation of infinite beauty, is supremely lovable and draws us to himself with bonds of love. So a formation in the via pulchritudinis ought to be part of our effort to pass on the faith. Each particular Church should encourage the use of the arts in evangelization, building on the treasures of the past but also drawing upon the wide variety of contemporary expressions so as to transmit the faith in a new “language of parables”. We must be bold enough to discover new signs and new symbols, new flesh to embody and communicate the word, and different forms of beauty which are valued in different cultural settings, including those unconventional modes of beauty which may mean little to the evangelizers, yet prove particularly attractive for others.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Section 167
2010s, 2013, Evangelii Gaudium · The Joy of the Gospel

Love , Life , Truth , Faith

“Moved by a generous eagerness to turn men's attention to the power which dwelt in circumstances, Mr. Owen devised the instructive phrase, that "man's character was formed for him and not by him." He used the unforgettable inference that "man is the creature of circumstances." The school of material improvers believed they could put in permanent force right circumstances. The great dogma was their charter of encouragement. To those who hated without thought It seemed a restrictive doctrine to be asked to admit that there were extenuating circumstances in the career of every rascal. To the clergy with whom censure was a profession, and who held that all sin was wilful, man being represented as the "creature of circumstances," appeared a denial of moral responsibility. When they were asked to direct hatred against error, and pity the erring — who had inherited so base a fortune of incapacity and condition — they were wroth exceedingly, and said it would be making a compromise with sin. The idea of the philosopher of circumstances was that the very murderer in his last cell had been born with a staple in his soul, to which the villainous conditions of his life had attached an unseen chain, which had drawn him to the gallows, and that the rope which was to hang him was but the visible part. Legislators since that day have come to admit that punishment is justifiable only as far as it has preventive influence. To use the great words of Hobbes, "Punishment regardeth not the past, only the future."”

George Holyoake (1817–1906) British secularist, co-operator, and newspaper editor

George Jacob Holyoake in The History of Co-operation in England (1875; 1902).

Life , Men , Hate , School

“Fear not the future, weep not for the past.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley The Revolt of Islam

Canto XI, st. 18
The Revolt of Islam (1817)

Fear , Future

“As long as you are afraid to love you will never be free to choose, free to want, free to get. Let go of what belongs to the past and think of the future with optimism. No one else can do it for you.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: Finché avrete paura di amare non sarete mai liberi di scegliere, liberi di volere, liberi di ottenere. Lasciate andare ciò che appartiene al passato e pensate al futuro con ottimismo. Nessun altro può farlo per voi.
Source: prevale.net

Love , Optimism , Thinking , Future

“There is no present or future-only the past, happening over and over again-now.”

Eugene O'Neill A Moon for the Misbegotten

Source: A Moon for the Misbegotten

Future

“Ah, my Belov'ed fill the Cup that clears
To-day Past Regrets and Future Fears:
To-morrow! — Why, To-morrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n Thousand Years.”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

Fear , Future

“An old farm is always more than the people under its roof. It is the past as well as the present, and vanished generations have built themselves into it as well as left their footsteps in the worn woodwork of the stair.”

Henry Beston book Northern Farm

Source: Northern Farm

People

“The explorers of the past were great men and we should honour them. But let us not forget that their spirit lives on.”

Edmund Hillary (1919–2008) New Zealand mountaineer

Sir Edmund Hillary : King Of The World
Context: The explorers of the past were great men and we should honour them. But let us not forget that their spirit lives on. It is still not hard to find a man who will adventure for the sake of a dream or one who will search, for the pleasure of searching, not for what he may find.

Men , Forgetting

“You often say, 'I have had a strange dream, a frightful dream, without any likeness to reality' You are mistaken in thinking it to be so; for it is often a reminiscence of places and things which you have seen in the past, or a foresight of those which you will see in another existence, or in this one at some future time. The body being torpid, the spirit tries to break his chain, and seeks, in the past or in the future, for the means of doing so.”

Allan Kardec (1804–1869) systematizer of Spiritism

Source: The Spirits' Book, p. 204.

Dreams , Thinking , Reality , Time

“Sensitiveness to beauty of the world continues, and efforts to preserve it were also made in the past.”

Marek Żukow-Karczewski (1961) Polish historian, journalist and opinion journalist

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

World , Beauty , Effort

“In these tempestuous times, we can't leave our enemies of the past and the present the monopoly on thought, imagination, and creativity.”

Thomas Sankara (1949–1987) President of Upper Volta

From a speech to the United Nations on 4 October 1984 https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2007/10/SANKARA/15203

Imagination , Time

“If it does not grow, even though you are working hard, it is not because of unfavorable circumstances, bad timing, or bad luck. … of the past has shown, it is during the bad times that the skilled manager lays firm foundations for future growth.”

Matsushita Konosuke (1894–1989) Japanese businessman

Source: Quest for prosperity: the life of a Japanese industrialist. 1988, p. 58

Bad luck , Time , Future

“Threefold the stride of Time, from first to last!
Loitering slow, the Future creepeth —
Arrow-swift, the Present sweepeth —
And motionless forever stands the Past.”

Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright

Sentences of Confucius

Time , Future

“Plainly Hugo was the greatest man of letters of his day. It has been given to few or none to live a life so full of effort and achievement, so rich in honour and success and fame. Born almost with the century, he was a writer at fifteen, and at his death he was writing still; so that the record of his career embraces a period of more than sixty years. There is hardly a department of art to a foremost place in which he did not prove his right. From first to last; from the time of Chateaubriand to the time of Zola, he was a leader of men; and with his departure from the scene the undivided sovereignty of literature became a thing of the past like Alexander's empire.”

William Ernest Henley (1849–1903) English poet, critic and editor

"Hugo"
Views and Reviews (1889)

Life , Death , Men , Art

“I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Source: 1980s, Trump: The Art of the Deal (1987), p. 2

Learning , Future

“History always constitutes the relation between a present and its past. Consequently fear of the present leads to mystification of the past”

John Berger book Ways of Seeing

Source: Ways of Seeing

Fear , History

“The past is the one thing we are not prisoners of. We can do with the past exactly what we wish. What we can't do is to change its consequences.”

John Berger (1926–2017) British painter, writer and art critic

Change

“Every morning my day begins with an SMS from the General Staff. Over the past 24 hours there were 7 occasions of shelling and two casualties. Figures may vary, but only one figure makes the morning good. It is zero. The shelling is zero. The loss is zero.”

Volodymyr Zelensky (1978) 6th President of Ukraine

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)

Making love , Loss

“More than any other continent or culture in the world today, Europe is now deeply weighed down with guilt for its past. Alongside this outgoing version of self-distrust runs a more introverted version of the same guilt. For there is also the problem in Europe of an existential tiredness and a feeling that perhaps for Europe the story has run out and a new story must be allowed to begin. Mass immigration — the replacement of large parts of the European populations by other people — is one way in which this new story has been imagined: a change, we seemed to think, was as good as a rest. Such existential civilizational tiredness is not a uniquely modern-European phenomenon, but the fact that a society should feel like it has run out of steam at precisely the moment when a new society has begun to move in cannot help but lead to vast, epochal changes.”

Douglas Murray (1979) British political commentator and far-right activist

The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam (2017)

People , World , Way , Feeling

“A country that believes it has never done any wrong is a country that could do wrong at any time. But a country that believes it has only done wrong, or done such a terrible, unalleviated amount of wrong in the past, is likely to become a country that is inclined to doubt its ability to ever do any good in the future.”

Douglas Murray (1979) British political commentator and far-right activist

The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam (2017)

Time , Future , Country

“forget the past, for it is gone from your domain! forget the future, for it is beyond your reach! control the present! Live supremely well now! This is the way of the wise…”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

Way , Future , Forgetting

“That's what I like about the World Series. It gives me a chance to talk with lots of writers, a chance for them to understand me better than in the past. When Roberto Clemente is mentioned, he is always mentioned with injuries. They say I'm moody, selfish, temperamental. That's not the real me. I was born with a serious face. If you know my life, if you know me well by taking the time to learn to know me, then you'll understand me. Most places I go, people say "smile." I don't like that. I don't believe in being a hypocrite. If the occasion is for smiling, I will be smiling. I'm a very happy person.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

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>

Life , Happiness , People , World

“Thus we may have knowledge of the past but cannot control it; we may control the future but have no knowledge of it.”

Claude Elwood Shannon (1916–2001) American mathematician and information theorist

Coding theorems for a discrete source with a fidelity criterion. IRE International Convention Records, volume 7, pp. 142--163, 1959.
Context: This duality can be pursued further and is related to a duality between past and future and the notions of control and knowledge. Thus we may have knowledge of the past but cannot control it; we may control the future but have no knowledge of it.

Knowledge , Future

“There is nothing inherently expensive about rockets. It's just that those who have built and operated them in the past have done so with horrendously poor efficiency.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)
Variant: There is nothing inherently expensive about rockets. It's just that those who have built and operated them in the past have done so with horrendously poor efficiency.

“I think we’ve got the risks pretty well characterized. I think we are at least avoiding the mistakes that have been made in the past.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)

Thinking

“Whoso neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead for the future.”

Euripidés (-480–-406 BC) ancient Athenian playwright

Phrixus, Frag. 927

Youth , Learning , Future , Dead

“Actually, your past successes are your biggest obstacle: every battle, every war, is different, and you cannot assume that what worked before will work today.”

Robert Greene The 33 Strategies of War

Source: The 33 Strategies of War

War , Success

“I am convinced that knowledge is power - to overcome the past, to change our own situations, to fight new obstacles, to make better decisions.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence

Knowledge , Decision , Change , Fight

“It is not often that nations learn from the past, even rarer that they draw the correct conclusions from it.”

Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) United States Secretary of State

Learning , Drawing

“First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.
If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless.
Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million… despite all this, the Americans are once again trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.
So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.
Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

1990s, Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders (1998)

War , People , Fight

“My whole past life I live again in memory, and, involuntarily, I ask myself: 'why have I lived - for what purpose was I born?'… A purpose there must have been, and, surely, mine was an exalted destiny, because I feel that within my soul are powers immeasurable… But I was not able to discover that destiny, I allowed myself to be carried away by the allurements of passions, inane and ignoble. From their crucible I issued hard and cold as iron, but gone for ever was the glow of noble aspirations - the fairest flower of life. And, from that time forth, how often have I not played the part of an axe in the hands of fate! Like an implement of punishment, I have fallen upon the head of doomed victims, often without malice, always without pity… To none has my love brought happiness, because I have never sacrificed anything for the sake of those I have loved: for myself alone I have loved - for my own pleasure. I have only satisfied the strange craving of my heart, greedily draining their feelings, their tenderness, their joys, their sufferings - and I have never been able to sate myself. I am like one who, spent with hunger, falls asleep in exhaustion and sees before him sumptuous viands and sparkling wines; he devours with rapture the aerial gifts of the imagination, and his pains seem somewhat assuaged. Let him but awake: the vision vanishes - twofold hunger and despair remain!
And tomorrow, it may be, I shall die!… And there will not be left on earth one being who has understood me completely. Some will consider me worse, others, better, than I have been in reality… Some will say: 'he was a good fellow'; others: 'a villain.”

Mikhail Lermontov book A Hero of Our Time

And both epithets will be false. After all this, is life worth the trouble? And yet we live - out of curiosity! We expect something new... How absurd, and yet how vexatious!
A Hero of Our Time (1840; rev. 1841)

Love , Life , Hunger , Pain

“No, it is not you I love so ardently,
The glitter of your beauty is not for me:
I love in you my past suffering
And my perished youth.”

Mikhail Lermontov (1814–1841) Russian writer, poet and painter

"No, it is not you I love so ardently..." (1841)
Poems

Love , Youth , Beauty , Suffering

“If you are in front of a wall that you cannot get past, would you just keep banging your head into the wall?... No, you would find a new wall.”

David Belle (1973) French actor

http://parkour.net/modules/articles/item.php?itemid=16

“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.”

Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) German theoretical physicist

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.

World , Way , Help

“This is what the past is for! Every experience God gives us, every person He puts in our lives is the perfect preparation for the future that only He can see.”

Corrie ten Boom book The Hiding Place

Source: The Hiding Place

God , Future , Personality , Perfection

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

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Drink , Future , Dead

“Today I know that such memories are the key not to the past, but to the future. I know that the experiences of our lives, when we let God use them, become the mysterious and perfect preparation for the work He will give us to do.”

Corrie ten Boom book The Hiding Place

Source: The Hiding Place

God , Memory , Future , Perfection

“Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future.”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer

Memory , Future

“It seems to me that I am being born into a new life and that all the methods and habits of the past can no longer be of any use. It seems to me that what was once a result is now only a preparation … It is as if I was stripped of all my past, of my errors as well as my conquests, as if all that had disappeared to give place to one new-born whose whole existence has yet to take shape … An immense gratitude rises from my heart. I seem to have at last arrived at the threshold which I have long sought.”

The Mother (1878–1973) spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo

How she felt when she sat down at the feet of Sri Aurobindo, quoted in "Diary notes and Meeting with Sri Aurobindo" and also in The Mother (of Sri Aurobindo Ashram) Prema Nandakumar of National Book Trust, India, (1977) http://books.google.co.in/books?id=R1sqAAAAYAAJ, p. 23

Life , Error , Heart , Gratitude

“To look forward, to want life, means we have to be willing to look backwards and become more conscious of all those who have hurt us, all that is broken in us and that has brought us inner deaths, hurts that we may have hidden and stifled. It means that we acknowledge the story of our origins, of our own lives, see and accept our brokenness and the times we also have hurt others. When we have accepted who we are and what we need in order to grow in compassion and peacemaking, we can move forward to give life. To forgive is a gift of God that permits us to let go of our past hurts.”

Jean Vanier (1928–2019) Canadian humanitarian

Jean Vanier, Finding Peace, pp 47-48
From books

Life , Death , God , Forgiveness

“I am in a very black mood and profoundly disgusted with painting. It really is a continual torture! Don't expect to see anything new, the little I did manage to do has been destroyed, scraped off, or torn up. You've no idea what appalling weather we've had continuously these two past months. When you're trying to convey the weather, the atmosphere and the general mood, it's enough to make you mad with rage.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

Quote from Monet's letter to art-critic and his friend Gustave Geffroy, Giverny 1890; as cited in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 56
1890 - 1900

Idea , Mood , Rage , Painting

“It isn't a matter of forgetting. What one has to learn is how to remember and yet be free of the past.”

Aldous Huxley book Island

Source: Island

Learning , Forgetting

“I do not regret this journey, which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardships, help one another, and meet death with as great a fortitude as ever in the past.”

Robert Falcon Scott (1868–1912) Royal Navy officer and explorer

Journal, 29 March 1912 http://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/museum/diaries/scottslastexpedition/
Context: We arrived within 11 miles of our old One Ton Camp with fuel for one hot meal and food for two days. For four days we have been unable to leave the tent - the gale howling about us. We are weak, writing is difficult, but for my own sake I do not regret this journey, which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardships, help one another, and meet death with as great a fortitude as ever in the past. We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the will of Providence, determined still to do our best to the last.

Death , Help

“Human has always striven to retain the past, to keep it convincing; there's nothing wicked in that. Without it we have no continuity; we have only the moment. And, deprived of the past, the moment - the present - has little meaning, if any.”

Philip K. Dick book Now Wait for Last Year

Source: Now Wait for Last Year

“Since we have no systematic way to avoid all the inconsistencies of commonsense logic, each person must find his own way by building a private collection of "cognitive censors" to suppress the kinds of mistakes he has discovered in the past.”

Marvin Minsky (1927–2016) American cognitive scientist

Jokes and their Relation to the Cognitive Unconscious (1980)

Way , Personality

“The treason past, the traitor is no longer needed.”

Pedro Calderón de la Barca Life is a Dream

El traidor no es menester
siendo la traición pasada.
Segismundo, Act III, l. 1109.
La vida es sueño (Life is a Dream)

“I see the Four-fold Man.
The Humanity in deadly sleep,
And its fallen Emanation. The Spectre & its cruel Shadow.
I see the Past, Present & Future, existing all at once
Before me; O Divine Spirit sustain me on thy wings!”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Source: 1800s, Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion (c. 1803–1820), Ch. 1, plate 15, lines 6-9

Sleep , Future

“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

Secret

“It has been complicated for the past four years (2017–2021) and it will continue to be complicated. But maybe it is also healthy having to work with people who don't agree with you on everything.”

Katrín Jakobsdóttir (1976) 28th Prime Minister of Iceland

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.

People

“Brother Nabi - to a philosophical letter [he received from Denis ] a philosophical answer... [but] first of all, forgive the incoherence of my last letter. I am feeling remorsed about what I told you about Gauguin. There is no humbug about him, not, at any rate, with respect to those he knows are capable of understanding him. I have lived with him for the past fifteen days in the closest association [in Pont-Aven]. We share a room. I have told him what I dislike about his work; what I said can be regarded as a sally against the ingrained habits of contemporary painting. But let's go back to our philosophy....(a:) Immutable principles exist in art. There is a science, namely aesthetics, that teaches them. Today this science is dead. It was alive in the days of the beatific primitives…”

Paul Sérusier (1864–1927) French painter

Source: from: 'A letter to Maurice Denis, p. 237

Art , Feeling , Forgiveness , Understanding

“I can tell you that solitude
Is not all exaltation, inner space
Where the soul breathes and work can be done.
Solitude exposes the nerve,
Raises up ghosts.
The past, never at rest, flows through it.”

May Sarton (1912–1995) American poet, novelist, and memoirist

Soul , Solitude

“Wrinkles here and there seem unimportant compared to the Gestalt of the whole person I have become in this past year.”

May Sarton (1912–1995) American poet, novelist, and memoirist

Source: Journal of a Solitude

Personality

“When we speak of the Rumanian nation, we refer not only to the Rumanians currently living on the same territory, with the same past and same future, the same habits, the same language, the same interests. When we speak of the Rumanian nation we refer to all Rumanians, dead or alive, who have lived on this land of ours from the beginnings of history and will live on it also in the future.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Nation and Culture

History , Future , Dead

“We now come to the question of applying the observational tests to earlier theories. These theories were based on the hypothesis that all the matter in the universe was created in one big bang at a particular time in the remote past. It now turns out that… all such theories are in conflict with observational requirements.”

Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) British astronomer

BBC radio broadcast, March 28, 1949. http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/library/special_collections/hoyle/exhibition/radio/ Reprinted in April 1949 in The Listener, a BBC magazine.

Question , Universe , Time