“The bloody future. What’s it ever done for us?”

Source: Paradox Resolution (2012), Chapter 17 (p. 172)

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K. A. Bedford photo
K. A. Bedford 12
Australian writer 1963

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“In this case, an intimate knowledge of what has been done before us cannot but greatly facilitate our future progress, if it be not absolutely necessary to it.”

Preface
The History and Present State of Electricity (1767)
Context: Great conquerors, we read, have been both animated, and also, in a great measure, formed by reading the exploits of former conquerors. Why may not the same effect be expected from the history of philosophy to philosophers? May not even more be expected in this case? The wars of many of those conquerors, who received this advantage from history, had no proper connection with former wars: they were only analogous to them. Whereas the whole business of philosophy, diversified as it is, is but one; it being one and the same great scheme, that all philosophers, of all ages and nations, have been conducting, from the beginning of the world; so that the work being the same, the. labours of one are not only analogous to those of of another, but in an immediate manner subservient to them; and one philosopher succeeds another in the same field; as one Roman proconsul succeeded another in carrying on the same war, and pursuing the same conquests, in the same country. In this case, an intimate knowledge of what has been done before us cannot but greatly facilitate our future progress, if it be not absolutely necessary to it.

“Why we should put ourselves out of our way to do anything for posterity, for what has posterity ever done for us?”

Boyle Roche (1736–1807) Irish politician

In a debate in the Irish House of Commons on the vote of a grant which was recommended by Sir John Parnell, Chancellor of the Exchequer, as one not likely to be felt burdensome for many years to come, it was observed in reply that the House had no right to load posterity with a debt for what could in no degree operate to their advantage. This quotation was Sir Boyle's response.
[Barrington, Jonah, Personal sketches and recollections of his own times, Chapter XVII https://archive.org/details/personalsketche06barrgoog]

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“What matters is not what is being done of us, but what we do ourselves with what has been done of us.”

Original: (fr) L’important n’est pas ce qu’on fait de nous mais ce que nous faisons nous-même de ce qu’on a fait de nous.
Source: Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952), p.55

“The future was not what it used to be.”

Source: Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait (2008), Chapter 13 (p. 156)

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“What would be done to us in the name of war if these things are done to us in the name of neutrality?”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)
Context: We cannot afford to continue to use hundreds of thousands of immigrants merely as industrial assets while they remain social outcasts and menaces any more than fifty years ago we could afford to keep the black man merely as an industrial asset and not as a human being. We cannot afford to build a big industrial plant and herd men and women about it without care for their welfare. We cannot afford to permit squalid overcrowding or the kind of living system which makes impossible the decencies and necessities of life. We cannot afford the low wage rates and the merely seasonal industries which mean the sacrifice of both individual and family life and morals to the industrial machinery. We cannot afford to leave American mines, munitions plants, and general resources in the hands of alien workmen, alien to America and even likely to be made hostile to America by machinations such as have recently been provided in the case of the two foreign embassies in Washington. We cannot afford to run the risk of having in time of war men working on our railways or working in our munition plants who would in the name of duty to their own foreign countries bring destruction to us. Recent events have shown us that incitements to sabotage and strikes are in the view of at least two of the great foreign powers of Europe within their definition of neutral practices. What would be done to us in the name of war if these things are done to us in the name of neutrality?

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“The future ain't what it used to be.”

Yogi Berra (1925–2015) American baseball player, manager, coach

When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It!: Inspiration and Wisdom from One of Baseball's Greatest Heroes, Hyperion, 2002, ISBN 0786867752, p. 159.
Paul Valery (1937): "The future, like everything else, is no longer quite what it used to be.". Translated in English in 1948 in Our Destiny and Literature.
Disputed, Misattributed

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“Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

Variant: Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

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“The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Unsourced

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“I learn from thinking about the future, what hasn't been done yet. That's kind of my constant obsession.”

John Cale (1942) Welsh composer, singer-songwriter and record producer

Attributed without citation at John Cale Quotes, inspirationalstories.com, 16 November 2012 http://www.inspirationalstories.com/quotes/t/john-cale/,

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