Quotes about the past

„The past year and a half has been really transitional for me, just personally, as well as transitioning into becoming a woman.“

—  Selena Gomez American singer and actress 1992

„I wish the very best for each and every one of you. Even if you think you are the most pitiful wretch on two feet, this is completely possible. It doesn't matter how bad we have been or how much difficulty and trouble we've created for ourselves and others in the past. The question is, how will it end? "All's well that ends well," as the saying goes, and that's as true as can be. The way things end is the way they will remain. Things won't be as they were before.“

—  Elias Aslaksen Norwegian clergyman 1888 - 1976

Closing remark - Aslaksen's last recorded message
No difficulties (Stavanger, 18 January, 1976)

„Endurance is composed of four attributes: eagerness, fear, piety and anticipation (of death). so whoever is eager for Paradise will ignore temptations; whoever fears the fire of Hell will abstain from sins; whoever practices piety will easily bear the difficulties of life and whoever anticipates death will hasten towards good deeds.
Conviction has also four aspects to guard oneself against infatuations of sin; to search for explanation of truth through knowledge; to gain lessons from instructive things and to follow the precedent of the past people, because whoever wants to guard himself against vices and sins will have to search for the true causes of infatuation and the true ways of combating them out and to find those true ways one has to search them with the help of knowledge, whoever gets fully acquainted with various branches of knowledge will take lessons from life and whoever tries to take lessons from life is actually engaged in the study of the causes of rise and fall of previous civilizations.
Justice also has four aspects depth of understanding, profoundness of knowledge, fairness of judgment and dearness of mind; because whoever tries his best to understand a problem will have to study it, whoever has the practice of studying the subject he is to deal with, will develop a clear mind and will always come to correct decisions, whoever tries to achieve all this will have to develop ample patience and forbearance and whoever does this has done justice to the cause of religion and has led a life of good repute and fame.
Jihad is divided into four branches: to persuade people to be obedient to Allah; to prohibit them from sin and vice; to struggle (in the cause of Allah) sincerely and firmly on all occasions and to detest the vicious. Whoever persuades people to obey the orders of Allah provides strength to the believers; whoever dissuades them from vices and sins humiliates the unbelievers; whoever struggles on all occasions discharges all his obligations and whoever detests the vicious only for the sake of Allah, then Allah will take revenge on his enemies and will be pleased with Him on the Day of Judgment.“

—  Ali, book Nahj al-Balagha

Nahj al-Balagha

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

—  Carl Sagan American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator 1934 - 1996

„More attention to the History of Science is needed, as much by scientists as by historians, and especially by biologists, and this should mean a deliberate attempt to understand the thoughts of the great masters of the past, to see in what circumstances or intellectual milieu their ideas were formed, where they took the wrong turning or stopped short on the right track.“

—  Ronald Fisher English statistician, evolutionary biologist, geneticist, and eugenicist 1890 - 1962

Natural selection from the genetical standpoint. Australian Journal of Science 22, 16-17, 1959.
1950s

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

—  Tom Hiddleston English actor, producer and musical performer 1981

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

—  Frank Iero American musician 1981

„The past is never dead. It's not even past.“

—  William Faulkner, book Requiem for a Nun

Act 1, sc. 3; this has sometimes been paraphrased or misquoted as "The past isn't over. It isn't even past."
Source: Requiem for a Nun (1951)

„If we dwell on real or imagined sins of the past, we shall never be able to find one another in the present, nor shall we be able to work together on building the future.“

—  F. W. de Klerk South African politician 1936

Speech to the Good-will Foundation (9 March 1991)
1990s

„If the future is to remain open and free, we need people who can tolerate the unknown, who will not need the support of completely worked out systems or traditional blueprints from the past.“

—  Margaret Mead American anthropologist 1901 - 1978

„The past can't hurt you anymore, not unless you let it.“

—  Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

Source: V for Vendetta

„The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.“

—  L. P. Hartley, book The Go-Between

First sentence.
The Go-Between (1953)

„We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is. We are searching for an ideal image of our own world: we go in quest of a planet, of a civilisation superior to our own but developed on the basis of a prototype of our primeval past. At the same time, there is something inside us which we don't like to face up to, from which we try to protect ourselves, but which nevertheless remains, since we don't leave Earth in a state of primal innocence. We arrive here as we are in reality, and when the page is turned and that reality is revealed to us — that part of our reality which we would prefer to pass over in silence — then we don't like it any more.“

—  Stanisław Lem, book Solaris

Solaris (1961), Ch. 6: "The Little Apocrypha", p. 72
Solaris (1961)

„When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.“

—  Wisława Szymborska, Poems New and Collected

Source: Poems New and Collected

„The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.“

—  Henri Bergson, book Matter and Memory

Source: Matter and Memory

„The past is behind you and there is nothing you can do to change it. However, you are in total control of your future.

RJ Intindola – 1980 *“

—  RJ Intindola (Gandolfo)

„Whatever we do must be in accord with human nature. We cannot drive people; we must direct their development… The general policy of the past has been to drive, but the era of force must give way to that of knowledge, and the policy of the future will be to teach and to lead, to the advantage of all concerned“

—  Henry Gantt American engineer 1861 - 1919

Gantt (1910) Work, Wages, and Profits: Their Influence on the Cost of Living, p. 116. cited in: Daniel A. Wren (1994) The evolution of management thought. p. 137.
Work, Wages, and Profits: Their Influence on the Cost of Living. 1910

„For several years we have witnessed climatic irregularities that prompt fear and anxiety about the conditions of our future existence. However, the climatic anomalies occurred also in the past when the blame for environmental destruction could hardly be put on humans.“

—  Marek Żukow-Karczewski Polish historian, journalist and opinion journalist 1961

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

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

—  Marek Żukow-Karczewski Polish historian, journalist and opinion journalist 1961

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