A collection of quotes on the topic of yesterday, today, tomorrow, day.
“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.”
“If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.”
“Remember, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.”
Source: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948), p. 237. Part 8 : How I Conquered Worry,
“Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why it's called the present.”
“I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday.”
Not by Roosevelt, but from Steven Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (1989).
Misattributed
Speech in Porto Alegre http://www2.planalto.gov.br/acompanhe-o-planalto/discursos/discursos-da-presidenta/discurso-da-presidenta-da-republica-dilma-rousseff-na-cerimonia-de-anuncio-de-investimentos-do-pac-mobilidade-urbana-e-entrega-de-57-maquinas-motoniveladoras ( YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3IvZToSwgE), October 12.
2013
“Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. ”
On destiny - "The Shock Of Reality" http://allafrica.com/stories/200908240244.html All Africa (August 24 2009)
“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”
Source: Alice in Wonderland
Source: The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx
“People who say that yesterday was better than today are ultimately devaluing their own existence.”
“My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.”
“In the end, today is forever, yesterday is still today, and tomorrow is already today.”
My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)
Source: The Canterville Ghost http://www.planetmonk.com/wilde/savile/canterville.c1.html (1887)
“I'd trade all my tomorrows for one single yesterday.”
Speech in the Reichstag (6 April 1916), quoted in W. M. Knight-Patterson, Germany. From Defeat to Conquest 1913-1933 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1945), p. 75
1910s
1850s, The House Divided speech (1858)
Everything Has Changed, written by Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran.
Song lyrics, Red (2012)
From 1985 interview with Swiss Journalist Jean-Philippe Rapp, translated from Sankara: Un nouveau pouvoir africain by Jean Ziegler. Lausanne, Switzerland: Editions Pierre-Marcel Favre, 1986. In Thomas Sankara Speaks: The Burkina Faso Revolution 1983-87. trans. Samantha Anderson. New York: Pathfinder, 1988. pp. 141-144.
"The Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti, Part Three"
Sacco e Vanzetti (1971)
April 15th 2012 speech in Kim Il-Sung Square, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/16/world/asia/kim-jong-un-north-korean-leader-talks-of-military-superiority-in-first-public-speech.html
“… yesterday’s enemies are in power and from there, they are trying to establish a Marxist regime.”
As quoted in Alexei Barrionuevo (23 December 2010). "Argentina: Ex-Dictator Sentenced in Murders". The New York Times.
Inside the Painter's Studio, Joe Fig, Princeton Architectural Press, 2009, p. 42
Response to question on his feelings about the atomic bombings, while visiting Japan in 1960.
“Tomorrow hopes we have learned something from yesterday. ”
“I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.”
Included in Portrait-Life of Lincoln (1910) by Francis T Miller
Posthumous attributions
“If what you have done yesterday still looks big to you, you haven't done much today.”
101 Best Ways to Get Ahead: Solid Gold Advice from 101 of the World's Most Successful People (2004) by Michael E. Angier and Sarah Pond, p. 30
1990s
“Today is the tomorrow you were promised yesterday.”
Source: The Lost Thing
“Perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us yesterday, seperate, in the evening.”
“If you have one foot in yesterday and one foot in tomorrow, you're pissing all over today.”
Source: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future...: Twists and Turns and Lessons Learned
“Tomorrow owes you the sum of your yesterdays. No more than that. And no less.”
Source: The Mad Ship
Playboy interview, May 1971
Context: There's a lot of things great about life. But I think tomorrow is the most important thing. Comes in to us at midnight very clean, ya know. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday.
Source: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There
Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
The Rubaiyat (1120)
2011, Address on the natural and nuclear energy disasters in Japan (March 2011)
The Nobodies; Cied in Mother Jones Magazine (1991) The Book of Embraces. March-April 1991. p. 71
The Book of Embraces (1991)
Statement by the President (20 August 2014) http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/08/20/statement-president
2014
1910 - 1935, The mysteries of the forest' (1934)
So sind die Parteien der Demokratie: Geschäftsgruppen! Weiter nichts. Weltanschauung? Was ist das für ein reaktionärer Begriff? Ehre, Treue, Glauben, Überzeugung? Mann, sie sind von Gestern!
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)
“Skepticism, riddling the faith of yesterday, prepared the way for the faith of tomorrow.”
As quoted in The Great Quotations (1960) by George Seldes, p. 864
On the song "Yesterday", written by Paul McCartney
Playboy interview (1980)
Vol. I, Ch. 31, pg. 829.
(Buch I) (1867)
Von der Großmacht zur Weltmacht on the seizure of thousands of works of German art. (26 November 1937)
1930s
Letter to Frank Belknap Long (27 February 1931), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 307
Non-Fiction, Letters, to Frank Belknap Long
“The present is the ever moving shadow that divides yesterday from tomorrow. In that lies hope.”
Closing words, “Night is but a Shadow Cast by the Sun”
The Living City (1958)
press conference http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/06/08/remarks-president-obama-and-president-aquino-philippines-after-bilateral welcoming President Aquino of the Philippines, , quoted in [2012-06-10, Obama's private sector remarks critiqued, defended on Sunday shows, Morgan, Little, Los Angeles Times, http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/10/news/la-pn-obamas-private-sector-remarks-critiqued-defended-on-sunday-shows-20120610, 2012-06-29]
posed question: "Mr. President, Mitt Romney says you're out of touch for saying the private sector is doing fine. What's your response?"
2012
Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 9
Quoted in "The Devil's Disciples: Hitler's Inner Circle" - Page 807 - by Anthony Read - History - 2004.
“Great families of yesterday we show,
And lords whose parents were the Lord knows who.”
Pt. I, l. 374.
The True-Born Englishman http://www.luminarium.org/editions/trueborn.htm (1701)
Hitherto it has grown out of the secure, non-struggling life of the aristocrat. In future it may be expected to grow out of the secure and not-so-struggling life of whatever citizens are personally able to develop it. There need be no attempt to drag culture down to the level of crude minds. That, indeed, would be something to fight tooth and nail! With economic opportunities artificially regulated, we may well let other interests follow a natural course. Inherent differences in people and in tastes will create different social-cultural classes as in the past—although the relation of these classes to the holding of material resources will be less fixed than in the capitalistic age now closing. All this, of course, is directly contrary to Belknap's rampant Stalinism—but I'm telling you I'm no bolshevik! I am for the preservation of all values worth preserving—and for the maintenance of complete cultural continuity with the Western-European mainstream. Don't fancy that the dethronement of certain purely economic concepts means an abrupt break in that stream. Rather does it mean a return to art impulses typically aristocratic (that is, disinterested, leisurely, non-ulterior) rather than bourgeois.
Letter to Clark Ashton Smith (28 October 1934), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 60-64
Non-Fiction, Letters
"Beach Chair"
The Black Album (2003)
Source: Peace of Soul (1949), Ch. 1, p. 9
The Ballot or the Bullet (1964), Speech in Cleveland, Ohio (April 3, 1964)
2013, Cape Town University Address (June 2013)
The quote is usually regarded as anonymous, but is often attributed to her on several websites, as well as in several books, including My Life Is an Open Book http://books.google.es/books?id=qCOa1k--dt4C&printsec=frontcover&hl=es#v=onepage&q=eleanor%20roosevelt&f=false (2008), The Spirituality of Mary Magdalene http://books.google.es/books?hl=es&id=BLRuINwzVZcC&dq=eleanor+roosevelt++%22past+is+history%22&q=eleanor+roosevelt#v=snippet&q=eleanor%20roosevelt&f=false (2008), Mis cuatro estaciones http://books.google.es/books?hl=es&id=QCgANqKq8EIC&dq=ayer+es+historia%2C+ma%C3%B1ana++misterio.+Hoy+regalo+de+Dios+presente&q=%22eleanor+roosevelt%22#v=snippet&q=%22eleanor%20roosevelt%22&f=false (2008), and Gilles Lamontagne http://books.google.es/books?ei=MdG9UqGQK-fL2wX5zYC4Dw&hl=es&id=WyFKAQAAIAAJ&dq=Hier+est+de+l%27histoire%2C+demain+est+un+myst%C3%A8re+et+aujourd%27hui+est+un+cadeau.+C%27+est+pourquoi+nous+l%27appelons+%C2%AB+le+pr%C3%A9sent+roosevelt&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=eleanor+roosevelt (2010). None of these works cite any original reference.
Disputed
Statement at a press conference following Reverend Jeremiah Wright's speech at a Press Club event (29 April 2008) http://embeds.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/04/29/obama-calls-it-quits-with-former-pastor-jeremiah-wright/
2008
“Thank God,
my name isn't in the list of those
who died or were
killed yesterday!”
<span class="plainlinks"> Every Morning http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/every-morning-7/</span>
From Poetry
See You at the Top (2000)
Variant: Failure is an event, not a person. Yesterday ended last night.
Shaykh Abdur Rahmaan As-Sudays, 2007-03-19, April 19, 2002, www.alharamainsermons.org http://www.alharamainsermons.org/eng/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=71,.
Quote in Monet's letter from Etretat to his second [future] wife Alice Hoschedé, 1883; as cited in: K.E. Sullivan. Monet: Discovering Art, Brockhampton press, London (2004), p. 51
1870 - 1890
Source: Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900, Cézanne, - a Memoir with Conversations, (1897 - 1906), p. 148, in: 'What he told me – I. The motif'
Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister Rajoy of Spain After Bilateral Meeting https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/07/10/remarks-president-obama-and-prime-minister-rajoy-spain-after-bilateral (10 July 2016)
2016
At the end of the Civil War, asking that a military band play "Dixie" (10 April 1865) as quoted in Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy (1962) by Hans Nathan. Variant account: "I have always thought "Dixie" one of the best tunes I have ever heard. Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it, but I insisted yesterday that we fairly captured it... I now request the band to favor me with its performance".
1860s
Malala. "I am afraid", Saturday 3 January 2009; Cited in: Malala Yousafzai: Portrait of the girl blogger http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19899540, bbc.co.uk, 10 October 2012
Malala's diary, 2009
At a Swedish-Soviet summit which began on March 30, 1956, in Moscow. The stenographed discussion was later published by the Swedish Government.as quoted in Raoul Wallenberg (1985) by Eric Sjöquist, p. 119 ISBN 9153650875
Section V
1916 - 1920, Creative Credo (1920)
Context: Formerly we used to represent things visible on earth, things we either liked to look at or would have liked to see. Today we reveal the reality that is behind visible things, thus expressing the belief that the visible world is merely an isolated case in relation to the universe and that there are many more other, latent realities. Things appear to assume a broader and more diversified meaning, often seemingly contradicting the rational experience of yesterday. There is a striving to emphasize the essential character of the accidental.
“Yesterday's snow job becomes today's sermon.”
Source: Player Piano (1952), Chapter 9 (p. 93)
Context: "Strange business," said Lasher. "This crusading spirit of the managers and engineers, the idea of designing and manufacturing and distributing being sort of a holy war: all that folklore was cooked up by public relations and advertising men hired by managers and engineers to make big business popular in the old days, which it certainly wasn't in the beginning. Now, the engineers and managers believe with all their hearts the glorious things their forebears hired people to say about them. Yesterday's snow job becomes today's sermon."
Address on sentencing (1885)
Context: The Court. has done the work for me, and although at first appearance it seems to be against me, I am so confident in the idea which I have had the honor to express yesterday, that I think it is for good and not for my loss. Up to this moment, I have been considered by a certain party as insane, by another party as a criminal, by another party as a man with whom it was doubtful whether to have any intercourse. So there was hostility and there was contempt, and there was avoidance To-day, by the verdict of the Court, one of these three situations has disappeared.
I suppose that after having been condemned, I will cease to be called a fool, and for me it is a great advantage. I consider it as a great advantage. If I have a mission, I say "If " for the sake of those who doubt, but for my part it means "Since," since I have a mission, I cannot fulfil my mission as long as I am looked upon as an insane being-human being, at the moment that I begin to ascend that scale, I begin to succeed.
