“One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.”

— Golda Meir , book My Life

My Life (1975), p. 231

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Golda Meir 38

former prime minister of Israel 1898–1978

Robert Hughes (1938–2012) Australian critic, historian, writer

Things I Didn't Know (2006)

“To enforce the lies of the present, it is necessary to erase the truths of the past.”

George Orwell book 1984

Attributed to Orwell by Keith Olbermann on MSNBC (27 September 2006), this seems to be a paraphrase of some of the statements in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Misattributed
Source: 1984

“A form must be of its own time if it is to be recognized: one cannot relate to what one is not or does not have – Thus all that is of the past is to be rejected.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

quote in one of Mondrian's Paris' sketchbooks; as cited in Two Mondrian sketchbooks 1912 - 1914, ed. Robert P. Welsh & J. M. Joosten, Amsterdam 1969 op. cit. (note 31), p. 44
1910's

“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

“I construct my memories with my present. I am lost, abandoned in the present. I try in vain to rejoin the past: I cannot escape.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Nausea (1938)

“History cannot be erased or altered. Because that would mean killing yourself.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: 色彩を持たない多崎つくると、彼の巡礼の年

“Liberalism is the philosophy for our time, because it does not try to conserve every tradition of the past, because it does not apply to new problems the old doctrinaire solutions, because it is prepared to experiment and innovate and because it knows that the past is less important than the future.”

Pierre Trudeau (1919–2000) 15th Prime Minister of Canada

Defining liberalism at the 1968 Liberal leadership convention, as quoted in "History of the Liberal Party of Canada" (PDF at the Liberal Party website) http://web.archive.org/web/20070418135603/http://www.liberal.ca/pdf/docs/070417_lpc_history_en.pdf

“Memory is a snare, pure and simple; it alters, it subtly rearranges the past to fit the present.”

Mario Vargas Llosa (1936) Peruvian writer, politician, journalist, and essayist

“We must convince each generation that they are but transient passengers on this planet earth. It does not belong to them. They are not free to doom generations yet unborn. They are not at liberty to erase humanity's past nor dim its future.”

Bernard Lown (1921–2021) American cardiologist developer of the DC defibrillator and the cardioverter, as well as a recipient of the…

A Prescription for Hope (1985)
Context: If we are to succeed, this vision must possess millions of people. We must convince each generation that they are but transient passengers on this planet earth. It does not belong to them. They are not free to doom generations yet unborn. They are not at liberty to erase humanity's past nor dim its future. Only life itself can lay claim to sacred continuity. The magnitude of the danger and its imminence must bring the human family together in common pursuit of peace denied throughout the century. On the threshold of a new millennium the achievement of world peace is no longer remote, for it is beckoned by the unleashing of the deepest spiritual forces embedded in humankind when threatened with extinction. The reason, the creativeness, and the courage that human beings possess foster an abiding faith that what humanity creates, humanity can and will control.

“You cannot, you must not, judge the past by the present; you must try to see it in its own terms and values, if you are to have any inkling of it. You may not like what you see, but do not on that account fall into the error of trying to adjust it to suit your own vision of what it ought to have been.”

George MacDonald Fraser book Quartered Safe Out Here

Source: Quartered Safe Out Here (1992), p. xxiv.

“One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.”

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Golda Meir 38

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