
“If the past is a house of many chambers, then the present is the most recent coat of paint.”
Section 12 (p. 211)
Short fiction, Rumfuddle (1973)
“If the past is a house of many chambers, then the present is the most recent coat of paint.”
Section 12 (p. 211)
Short fiction, Rumfuddle (1973)
Source: "Some Perplexities about time: with an attempted solution" (1925), p. 149. as cited in: Jonathan Gorman, "The transmission of our understanding of historical time." Historia Social y de la Educación 1.2 (2012): 129-152.
Wallerstein (1974) The modern world system capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world economy in the sixteenth century. New York: Academic Press.
“Without question, Steve is the best Broadway lyricist, past or present.”
Source: Arthur Laurents; in Halliwell's Who's Who in the Movies (2001 ed): Art. Stephen Sondheim p. 408
“There is no past. Past is present when you carry it with you.”
Source: Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities
The Golden Man (1954)
Context: "He can look ahead. See what's coming. He can — prethink. Let's call it that. He can see into the future. Probably he doesn't perceive it as the future."
"No," Anita said thoughtfully. "It would seem like the present. He has a broader present. But his present lies ahead, not back. Our present is related to the past. Only the past is certain, to us. To him, the future is certain. And he probably doesn't remember the past, any more than any animal remembers what happened."
"As he develops," Baines said, "as his race evolves, it'll probably expand its ability to prethink. Instead of ten minutes, thirty minutes. Then an hour. A day. A year. Eventually they'll be able to keep ahead a whole lifetime. Each one of them will live in a solid, unchanging world. There'll be no variables, no uncertainty. No motion! They won't have anything to fear. Their world will be perfectly static, a solid block of matter."
"And when death comes," Anita said, "they'll accept it. There won't be any struggle; to them, it'll already have happened."
“If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.”