“I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past's fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare.”

“Perhaps I am just a hopeless rationalist, but isn't fascination as comforting as solace? Isn't nature immeasurably more interesting for its complexities and its lack of conformity to our hopes? Isn't curiosity as wondrously and fundamentally human as compassion?”

“An epoch can only be reproduced by its own artists, I mean by the artists who lived in it. I hold the artists of one century basically incapable of reproducing the aspect of a past or future century-in other words, of painting the past or the future.”

“We should try to be the parents of our future rather than the offspring of our past.”

“I would rather feel compassion than know the meaning of it. I would hope to act with compassion without thinking of personal gain.”

“If you could not accept the past and its burden, there was no future, for without one there cannot be the other, and […] if you could accept the past you might hope for the future, for only out of the past can you make the future.”

“Perhaps the best hope for the future of mankind is that ways will be found of increasing the scope and intensity of sympathy.”

“The past is past, the future unformed. There is only the moment, and that is where he prefers to be.”

“Let the world admire the supposed wisdom and valor of our great men. Perhaps they may adopt the qualities that have been ascribed to them, and thus good may be done. I shall not undeceive future generations.”

“The past has ended its time, the present is the moment, the future the becoming.”