“If you understand this refrain, you're gonna' understand everything I want to say to you today. It has four parts:
Creativity and innovation always builds on the past.
The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it.
Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past.
Ours is less and less a free society.”

“Creation always involves building upon something else. There is no art that doesn't reuse. And there will be less art if every reuse is taxed by the appropriator. Monopoly controls have been the exception in free societies; they have been the rule in closed societies.”

“Every time you are tempted to react in the same old way, ask if you want to be a prisoner of the past or a pioneer of the future. The past is closed and limited; the future is open and free.”

“You're always free to change your mind
and choose a different future, or a different past.”

“…everything has a past. Everything – a person, an object, a word, everything. If you don’t know the past, you can’t understand the present and plan properly for the future.”

“God is in the résumé-building business. He is always using past experiences to prepare us for future opportunities.”

“Looking at the past must only be a means of understanding more clearly what and who they are so that they can more wisely build the future.”

“Listen, Marxist: The organization we try to build is the kind of society our revolution will create. Either we will shed the past - in ourselves as well as in our groups - or there will simply be no future to win.”

“The past is what provides us with the building blocks. Our job today is to create new buildings out of them.”

“The voices of the grassroots, of people, must always be heard if we are to understand the past and move effectively toward the future”