“If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.”

— Baruch Spinoza

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Baruch Spinoza 210

Dutch philosopher 1632–1677

Flora Rheta Schreiber (1918–1988) American journalist

Source: Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities

“Nothing ever happened in the past that can prevent you from being present now; and if the past cannot prevent you from being present now, what power does it have?”

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

“Best not to mix the past with the present. The present paints the past with gold. The past paints the present with lead.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

“Writing the history of the present is always a very different thing from writing the history of the distant past. The history of the distant past depends entirely on literary and documentary sources; the history of the present always involves unwritten material as well as documents. But the difference was much greater in the days of Thucydides than it is now.”

J. B. Bury (1861–1927) Irish historian and freethinker

p. 82 http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo1.ark:/13960/t2g73zj2z;view=1up;seq=100
The Ancient Greek Historians (1909)

“Time goes from present to past.”

Shunryu Suzuki (1904–1971) Japanese Buddhist missionary

Source: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice

“Periodization sequesters human experience. The historicist separation of the past from the present prohibits empathy with the past and therefore precludes criticism in the present.”

Russell Berman (1950) American academic

Source: Fiction Sets You Free: Literature, Liberty and Western Culture (2007), p. 18.

“It would be well if, in studying the past, we could always bear in mind the problems of the present, and go to that past to seek large views of what is of lasting importance to the human race.”

Arnold Toynbee (1852–1883) British economic historian

Source: Lectures on The Industrial Revolution in England (1884), p. 31

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

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

“We observe things in the present and then, okay, we're assuming that that's always happened in the past, and we're going to figure out how this happened. You see? There is a difference between what you observed and what happened in the past.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

"Bill Nye Debates Ken Ham" (February 4, 2014)

“The present is only understandable through the past, with which it forms a living continuity; and the past is always grasped from our own partial viewpoint within the present.”

Terry Eagleton (1943) British writer, academic and educator

Source: 1980s, Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983), Chapter 2, p. 62

“If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.”

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Baruch Spinoza 210

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