“Full knowledge of the past helps us in dealing with the future.”
1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)
Context: Inasmuch as it is so often impossible to punish wrongs done in the past, and to prevent the consequences of the wrongs thus committed being felt by one innocent class, without shifting the burden to the shoulders of another innocent class, we ought to provide that hereafter business shall be carried on from its inception in such a way as to prevent swindling. Incidentally, this will also tend to prevent that excessive profit by one man, which may not be swindling, under existing laws, but which nevertheless is against the interest of the commonwealth. To know all the facts is of as much interest to the investor and the wage-worker as to the shipper, the producer, the consumer. Full knowledge of the past helps us in dealing with the future. If we find that high rates are due to overcapitalization n the past, or to any kind of sharp practice in the past, then, whether or not it is possible to take action which will partly remedy the wrong, we are certainly in a better position to prevent a repetition of the wrong.
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Theodore Roosevelt445
American politician, 26th president of the United States 1858–1919Related quotes
“There can be no dedication to Canada's future without a knowledge of its past.”
John Diefenbaker (1895–1979) 13th Prime Minister of Canada
"On Sir John A. Macdonald" Toronto Star (October 9, 1964)
“Before I can face the future, I must first deal with the past.”
D.J. MacHale The Soldiers of Halla
Source: The Soldiers of Halla
William Beveridge Beveridge Report
Pt. 1, 7
Social Insurance and Allied Services (1942)
Context: Any proposals for the future, while they should use to the full the experience gathered in the past, should not be restricted by consideration of sectional interests established in the obtaining of that experience. Now, when the war is abolishing landmarks of every kind, is the opportunity for using experience in a clear field. A revolutionary moment in the world’s history is a time for revolutions, not for patching.
Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer
Meditation 5 - Die Before Dying
Books, The Beggar, Volume IV: Die Before Dying (Hari-Nama Press, 2005)
Claude Elwood Shannon (1916–2001) American mathematician and information theorist
Coding theorems for a discrete source with a fidelity criterion. IRE International Convention Records, volume 7, pp. 142--163, 1959.
Context: This duality can be pursued further and is related to a duality between past and future and the notions of control and knowledge. Thus we may have knowledge of the past but cannot control it; we may control the future but have no knowledge of it.
Dennis Gabor (1900–1979) Nobel Prize-winning physicist and inventor of holography
"Optical transmission" in Information Theory : Papers Read at a Symposium on Information Theory (1952), as cited in Living Systems (1978) by James Grier Miller, p. 12
Context: Incomplete knowledge of the future, and also of the past of the transmitter from which the future might be constructed, is at the very basis of the concept of information. On the other hand, complete ignorance also precludes communication; a common language is required, that is to say an agreement between the transmitter and the receiver regarding the elements used in the communication process...
[The information of a message can] be defined as the 'minimum number of binary decisions which enable the receiver to construct the message, on the basis of the data already available to him.' These data comprise both the convention regarding the symbols and the language used, and the knowledge available at the moment when the message started.
“Armed with the knowledge of our past, we can with confidence charter a course for our future.”
Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist
Speech at Founding Rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (28 June 1964), as quoted in By Any Means Necessary (1970)
By any means necessary: speeches, interviews, and a letter (1970)
Context: Armed with the knowledge of our past, we can with confidence charter a course for our future. Culture is an indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle. We must take hold of it and forge the future with the past.
