“I love to live in the past, with a little hope for the future… ”
Source: All the King's Men (1946)
“Full knowledge of the past helps us in dealing with the future.”
1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)
Context: Inasmuch as it is so often impossible to punish wrongs done in the past, and to prevent the consequences of the wrongs thus committed being felt by one innocent class, without shifting the burden to the shoulders of another innocent class, we ought to provide that hereafter business shall be carried on from its inception in such a way as to prevent swindling. Incidentally, this will also tend to prevent that excessive profit by one man, which may not be swindling, under existing laws, but which nevertheless is against the interest of the commonwealth. To know all the facts is of as much interest to the investor and the wage-worker as to the shipper, the producer, the consumer. Full knowledge of the past helps us in dealing with the future. If we find that high rates are due to overcapitalization n the past, or to any kind of sharp practice in the past, then, whether or not it is possible to take action which will partly remedy the wrong, we are certainly in a better position to prevent a repetition of the wrong.
“There can be no dedication to Canada's future without a knowledge of its past.”
"On Sir John A. Macdonald" Toronto Star (October 9, 1964)
“It is obvious: The past was once the future and the future will become the past.”
The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)
“The past and future are veiled; but the past wears the widow's veil; the future, the virgin's.”
As quoted in Treasury of Thought (1872) by Maturin M. Ballou, p. 521
"Optical transmission" in Information Theory : Papers Read at a Symposium on Information Theory (1952), as cited in Living Systems (1978) by James Grier Miller, p. 12
Context: Incomplete knowledge of the future, and also of the past of the transmitter from which the future might be constructed, is at the very basis of the concept of information. On the other hand, complete ignorance also precludes communication; a common language is required, that is to say an agreement between the transmitter and the receiver regarding the elements used in the communication process...
[The information of a message can] be defined as the 'minimum number of binary decisions which enable the receiver to construct the message, on the basis of the data already available to him.' These data comprise both the convention regarding the symbols and the language used, and the knowledge available at the moment when the message started.
Speech at Founding Rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (28 June 1964), as quoted in By Any Means Necessary (1970)
By Any Means Necessary (1970)
