
“One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.”
My Life (1975), p. 231
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
“One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.”
My Life (1975), p. 231
2015, Remarks to the Kenyan People (July 2015)
Context: Every country and every culture has traditions that are unique and help make that country what it is. But just because something is a part of your past doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t mean that it defines your future. [... ] Just because something is a tradition doesn’t make it right.
Source: Quest for prosperity: the life of a Japanese industrialist. 1988, p. 58
“If you rely only on experience, you’ll simply keep applying old solutions to new problems.”
I know a lot of people who feel they have an identity only when they’re talking about their problems. That way, they exist, because their problems are linked to what they judge to be their history.
Aleph (2011)
“The past attracts me, the present frightens me, because the future is death.”
Source: The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant, Part One
“There is no solution because there is no problem.”