
“If a nation cannot face its past, it has no future.”
2010-, Ai Weiwei: ‘Shame on Me.’, 2011
Variant translation: When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.
Book Four, Chapter VIII
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Four
“If a nation cannot face its past, it has no future.”
2010-, Ai Weiwei: ‘Shame on Me.’, 2011
Source: Man’s Search for Himself (1953), p. 227
Context: The first thing necessary for a constructive dealing with time is to learn to live in the reality of the present moment. For psychologically speaking, this present moment is all we have. The past and future have meaning because they are part of the present: a past event has existence now because you are thinking of it at this present moment, or because it influences you so that you, as a living being in the present, are that much different. The future has reality because one can bring it into his mind in the present. Past was the present at one time, and the future will be the present at some coming moment. To try to live in the "when" of the future or the "then" of the past always involves an artificiality, a separating one's self from reality; for in actuality one exists in the present. The past has meaning as it lights up the present, and the future as it makes the present richer and more profound.
“The past has ended its time, the present is the moment, the future the becoming.”
Original: (it) Il passato ha concluso il suo tempo, il presente è l'attimo, il futuro il divenire.
Source: prevale.net
Indira Gandhi, the former Prime Minister of India quoted in [Cahn, R.W., The Coming of Materials Science, http://books.google.com/books?id=CCmJMr_K5NIC&pg=PA234, 16 March 2001, Elsevier, 978-0-08-052942-4, 272]
"The Greatest of the Monsters", p. 247
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)
Context: I said earlier that I do not believe an artist's life throws much light upon his works. I do believe, however, that, more often than most people realize, his works may throw light upon his life. An artist with certain imaginative ideas in his head may then involve himself in relationships which are congenial to them.