Quotes about yesterday (608 quotes, page 4)

“Everybody's daily life consists of problems arising from what you decided yesterday. Managers understand that. Mathematicians want to solve a theorem, publish the results and walk away clean. Managers never walk away clean. The real world is a very dirty place.
Clarity is supposed to be the objective of science. I disagree. I think the objective of science is confusion, because confusions carries you into problems.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

C. West Churchman cited in: Peter R. Horner (1993). "TIMS Turns 40," in: OR/MS Today, Vol. 20, No. 2, p. 40-43
1980s and later

Life , World , Understanding , Problem

“If what you did yesterday seems big, you haven't done anything today.”

Lou Holtz (1937) American college football coach, professional football coach, television sports announcer

Attributed by Ben Weiximann, "Top 15 Funniest Lou Holtz Quotes" http://bleacherreport.com/articles/59377-top-15-funniest-lou-holtz-quotes/, TheBleacherReport.com.
Attributed

“Yesterday, December 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

1940s, Response to the attack on Pearl Harbor (1941)
Context: Yesterday, December 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
The United States was at peace with that nation, and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its Emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific.

“Past, n. That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance. A moving line called the Present parts it from an imaginary period known as the Future. These two grand divisions of Eternity, of which the one is continually effacing the other, are entirely unlike. The one is dark with sorrow and disappointment, the other bright with prosperity and joy. The Past is the region of sobs, the Future is the realm of song. In the one crouches Memory, clad in sackcloth and ashes, mumbling penitential prayer; in the sunshine of the other Hope flies with a free wing, beckoning to temples of success and bowers of ease. Yet the Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one--the knowledge and the dream.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

Dreams , Hope , Disappointment , Knowledge

“The Führer confirms my impressions of yesterday. He would like an understanding with Great Britain. He knows that war with the British will be hard and bloody, and knows also that people everywhere today are averse to bloodshed.”

Franz Halder (1884–1972) German general

July 14, 1940 diary entry, quoted in "Their Finest Hour" - Page 230 - by Winston Churchill - History - 1986.
Sourced Encyclopedia of the Third Reich Louis L. Snyder

War , People , Understanding

“Do you know what worship is? Everything belongs to the Lord, so what is there to offer to Him? But the Master used to tell us: 'Once a rich man went to visit his orchard. He saw the gardeners busy with their work. The caretaker approached him and presented him with a ripe papaya, saying: "Sir, I picked this ripe fruit for you yesterday. Please accept it." Now the owner knows that the garden, the trees, the fruit all belong to him; but won't he appreciate the love and thoughtfulness of the caretaker? Worship is like this.'”

Swami Adbhutananda Disciple

Source: God Lived with Them, p.436

Love , Business , Tree

“He is not affected by our mutability; our changes do not alter Him. When we are restless, He remains serene and calm; when we are low, selfish, mean or dispirited, He is still the unalterable I AM, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. What God is in Himself, not what we may chance to feel Him in this or that moment to be, that is our hope. My soul, "hope thou in God."”

Frederick William Robertson (1816–1853) British writer and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 93.

God , Hope , Feeling , Soul

“Willow: What did I have for breakfast this morning? Do you remember?
Tara: Huh?
Willow: I-I wanna say bagel, but I think that was yesterday. You had two eggs sunny side up. I remember because they were wiggling at me like little boobs.
Tara: Sassy eggs.”

Amber Benson (1977) actress from the United States

Triangle [5.11]
Willow & Tara (2000-2002)

Thinking

“I had rather thought I was yesterday's man.”

Mark Tully (1935) British journalist

When he was named a Knight of the British Empire (KBE) in the Diplomatic and Overseas list of the Queen's honors.
Source: " It's Sir Mark Tully in UK honors list http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/south/12/31/tully.knighthood/," edition.cnn.com, CNN, December 31, 2001

“Never Do Yesterday What Should Be Done Tomorrow.”

Robert A. Heinlein book "—All You Zombies—"

"—All You Zombies—" (1958)

“One world and then another, running like a chain. One world treading on the heels of another world that plodded just ahead. One world’s tomorrow, another world’s today. And yesterday is tomorrow, and tomorrow is the past.
Except, there wasn’t any past. No past, that was, except the figment of remembrance that flitted like a night-winged thing in the shadow of one’s mind. No past that one could reach. No pictures painted on the wall of time. No film that one could run backwards and see what-once-had-been…
One road was open, but another road was closed. Not closed, of course, for it had never been. For there wasn’t any past, there never had been any, there wasn’t room for one. Where there should have been a past there was another world.”

Clifford D. Simak book City

Source: City (1952), Chapter 7, “Aesop” (pp. 195-196)

World , Time , Past , Painting

“The weak, sensual, pleasure-loving French. You know, not going to war because they’re all still in bed at two in the afternoon, with the sheets coiled about their knees, lying, there scratching themselves, smoking a Gauloise inside a Gitane, sweating Nice sancerre. Before one of them sloughs off the sheets to pad around the kitchen naked. No, not naked, naked from the waist down. To emphasise their nakedity. Picking up yesterday's croissant crumbs with their sweaty feet. Slashing yesterday's paintings.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

Monster (2004)

Love , War , Pleasure , Lying

“The Devil is right at home. The Devil, the Devil himself, is right in the house.
And the Devil came here yesterday. Yesterday the Devil came here. Right here. [crosses himself] And it smells of sulphur still today.
Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the Devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly. As the owner of the world.”

Hugo Chávez (1954–2013) 48th President of Venezuela

Speech at the U.N. in which he referred to George W. Bush as the Devil, (September 2006), as quoted in "Chavez's colourful quotations" at BBC News (12 November 2007) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7090600.stm
2006

World , Home , Housing

“To Harriet Harman. "Before turning to domestic issues, I was going to be nice to the right hon. and learned Lady. She has had a difficult week. She had to explain yesterday that she dresses in accordance with wherever she is going: she wears a helmet on a building site, she wears Indian clothes in the parts of her constituency with a large representation of Indian people, so when she goes to a Cabinet meeting, she presumably dresses as a clown. As I said, I was going to be nice to her before her previous response."”

William Hague (1961) British politician

02 April 2008, House of Commons, Prime Minister's Questions.

People , Learning , Parting , Clothes

“Being attached to the problems of yesterday or the insecurities of tomorrow will destroy your today.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 89

Problem

“”Jewish Peril” exposed.
Historic “Fake.”
Details of the forgery.
More parallels.
We published yesterday an article from our Constantinople Correspondent, which showed that the notorious “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” – one of the mysteries of politics since 1905 – were a clumsy forgery, the text being based on a book published in French in 1865. The book, without title page, was obtained by our correspondent from a Russian source, and we were able to identify it with a complete copy in the British Museum.
The disclosure, which naturally aroused the greatest interest among those familiar with Jewish questions, finally disposes of the “Protocols” as credible evidence of a Jewish plot against civilization.
We publish below a second article, which gives further close parallels between the language of the Protocols and that attributed to Machiavelli and Montesquieu in the volume dated from Geneva.
Plagiarism at Work.
(From our Constantinople Correspondent.)
While the Geneva Dialogue open with an exchange of compliments between Monsequieu and Machiavelli, which covers seven pages, the author of the Protocols plunges at once in medias res.
One can imagine him hastily turning over those first seven pages of the book which he has been ordered to paraphrase against time, and angrily ejaculating, “Nothing here.” But on page 8 of the Dialogues he finds what he wants.
Publisher: Good work Graves…we finally paid your émigré £ 300 for it…now if we can find Golovinski and get his confession…
Graves: He joined the Bolsheviks.
Golovinski became a party ‘’’activist’’’ and rose to be an adviser to Trotsky. But he ‘’’died’’’ last year!
Publisher: Well, that’s that!
Publisher: Oh but Graves, “The Times” is influential… after our expose we’ll probably hear no more of this fraud!
Graves: I’m not sure!
Anti-Bolsheviks, White Russians, published thousands of copies! Here’s a page from Nilus’ “The Great in the Small.”
Publisher: Astonishing…mystical symbols…eh?
The “Protocols” quickly began to circulate around the world.
A French edition this year…and in America Henry Ford, the auto magnate, has been serializing it in his paper, the “Dearborn independent”!
Publisher: When did it first appear in Europe?
Graves: The German edition…dated 1919, was the first!
This is an evil book…a fake designed to malign a whole group of people.
Publisher: I know, I know! …Ugly stuff, Graves.
Graves: Well, what are we to do about it?
Publisher: Your report exposed it as a foul fraud!
Publisher: Y’forget the power of the press, graves! “The Times” has tremendous worldwide influence.
This fraud will soon be well known everywhere…so, my boy, ‘’’what harm can the “protocols” possibly do now?”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), pp. 91-94

People , Books , World , Imagination

“Yesterday, you know, Mr. Earnshaw should have been at the funeral. He kept himself sober for the purpose - tolerably sober; not going to bed mad at six o'clock, and getting up drunk at twelve. Consequently he rose, in suicidal low spirits; as fit for the church as for a dance; and instead, he sat down by the fire and swallowed gin or brandy by tumblerfuls.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Isabella Linton (Ch. XVII).
Wuthering Heights (1847)

Suicide , Dance , Madness

“Where's he that died o' yesterday?
What better chance hath he
To clink the can and toss the pot
When this night's junkets be?
For the lad that died o' yesterday
Is just as dead — ho! ho! —
As the whoreson knave men laid away
A thousand years ago.”

Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833–1908) American poet, critic, and essayist

"Falstaff's Song".

Men , Chance , Night , Dead

“Yesterday, with an inevitability born of the utterly false promise that the bloodbath in Iraq is yielding dividends, we were supposed to believe that the death of Zarqawi was a famous victory.”

Robert Fisk (1946) English writer and journalist

Zarqawi's end is not a famous victory, nor will it bring Iraq any nearer to peace http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13556.htm, June 9, 2006
2006

Death , Victory , Falseness

“Our free eyes open now on new horizons and can see what yesterday, in our condition as colonial slaves, we could not observe: that “Western Civilization” disguises behind its showy facade a picture of hyenas and jackals … A carnivorous animal that feeds on unarmed peoples.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Address to the United Nations (1964)

People , Animals

“Yesterday people were going past my window in t shirts and dresses. But that's the men at the BBC for you.”

Eddie Mair (1965) Scottish broadcaster

From the PM Newsletter and Weblog
Source: Headlines http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/pm/2006/09/weather.shtml at bbc.co.uk, 22 September 2006.

Men , People , Past

“Ah, but my Computations, People say,
Reduced the Year to better reckoning? — Nay
'Twas only striking from the Calendar
Unborn To-morrow, and dead Yesterday.”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

Khayyám measured the length of the year as 365.24219858156 days;
The Rubaiyat (1120)

People , Dead

“Hillary Clinton, for months, and despite so many attacks, repeatedly refused to even say the words radical Islam until I challenged her yesterday. And, guess what, she will probably say them. She sort of has said them, but let's see what happens. She really has no choice, but she doesn't want to. However, she's really been forced, and she has been forced to say these words. She supports, and the reason is, she supports so much of what is wrong, and what is wrong with this country, and what's going wrong with our country and our borders. She has no clue, in my opinion, what radical Islam is and she won't speak honestly about it if she does, in fact, know. She's in total denial, and her continuing reluctance to ever name the enemy broadcasts weakness across the entire world — true weakness.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, June, Speech about the Orlando Shooting (June 13, 2016)

World , Support , Country

“I find this guy [Michael Berg] despicable. Everything in me says that. The want to be a better person today than I was yesterday says he's a dad, he's grieving, but I don't buy that. I'm sorry, I don't buy it. I think he is grieving, but I think he's a scumbag as well. I don't like this guy at all.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

The Glenn Beck Program
Premiere Radio Networks
2004-05-14
Clear Channel radio host railed against Nick Berg's father, called him a "scumbag"
Media Matters for America
2004-05-17
http://mediamatters.org/items/200405170002
Radio host who called Nick Berg's father "a scumbag" responded to MMFA report: "I think public opinion will grow closer and closer to mine"
Media Matters for America
2004-05-18
http://mediamatters.org/items/200405180002
2000s

Guy , Thinking , Personality

“Here, India will be a global player of considerable political and economic impact. As a result, the need to explicate what it means to be an Indian (and what the ‘Indianness’ of the Indian culture consists of) will soon become the task of the entire intelligentsia in India. In this process, they will confront the challenge of responding to what the West has so far thought and written about India. A response is required because the theoretical and textual study of the Indian culture has been undertaken mostly by the West in the last three hundred years. What is more, it will also be a challenge because the study of India has largely occurred within the cultural framework of America and Europe. In fulfilling this task, the Indian intelligentsia of tomorrow willhave to solve a puzzle: what were the earlier generations of Indian thinkers busy with, in the course of the last two to three thousand years? The standard textbook story, which has schooled multiple generations including mine, goes as follows: caste system dominates India, strange and grotesque deities are worshipped in strange andgrotesque ways, women are discriminated against, the practice of widow-burning exists and corruption is rampant. If these properties characterize India of today and yesterday, the puzzle about what the earlier generation of Indian thinkers were doing turns into a very painful realization: while the intellectuals of Europeanculture were busy challenging and changing the world, most thinkersin Indian culture were apparently busy sustaining and defendingundesirable and immoral practices. Of course there is our Buddha andour Gandhi but that is apparently all we have: exactly one Buddha and exactly one Gandhi. If this portrayal is true, the Indians have butone task, to modernize India, and the Indian culture but one goal: to become like the West as quickly as possible.”

S. N. Balagangadhara (1952) Indian philosopher

Foreword by S. N. Balagangadhara in "Invading the Sacred" (2007)
Source: Balagangadhara, S.N. (2007), "Foreword." In Ramaswamy, de Nicolas & Banerjee (Eds.), Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America . Delhi: Rupa & Co., pp. vii–xi.

Women , Pain , World , School

“Chater: You insulted my wife in the gazebo yesterday evening!
Septimus: You are mistaken. I made love to your wife in the gazebo. She asked me to meet her there, I have her note somewhere, I dare say I could find it for you, and if someone is putting it about that I did not turn up, by God, sir, it is a slander.”

Tom Stoppard Arcadia

Act I
Arcadia (1993)

Love , God

“Visson has said, "Today's profits are yesterday's good will ripened," and though friendship is no basis for Business yet Business is an excellent basis for lasting friendship. To cement this friendship the Businessman recalls the fact that the memory of quality remains long after the price is forgotten, and keeps Buskin's dictum in mind that there is nothing in this world that cannot be made a little worse and sold a little cheaper. While it is equally true that men will make a beaten path to your door to acquire a better quality article even if it be a mouse trap. Nevertheless, a man is known by the Company he floats, or the Secretaries he employs, though the latter fluctuate more than the market, especially if of the gentler sex!”

Peter de Noronha (1897–1970) Indian businessman

The Pageant of Life (1964), Businessmen

Men , Friendship , World , Sex

““When i say Abhinaya, oh, I can't do the abhinaya like what the great man did here yesterday”
- Great Bharatanatyam dancer Balasaraswati next day after Chakyar's lecture-demonstration at Madras Music Academy in 1973.”

Mani Madhava Chakyar (1899–1990) Indian actor

Abhinaya and Netrābhinaya
Source: Sruti- India's premier Music and Dance magazine, August 1990 issue (71), p. 17.

Music

“The history of childhood is a nightmare from which we have only recently begun to awaken. The further back in history one goes, the lower the level of child care, and the more likely children are to be killed, abandoned, beaten, terrorized, and sexually abused. It is our task here to see how much of this childhood history can be recaptured from the evidence that remains to us. That this pattern has not previously been noticed by historians is because serious history has long been considered a record of public not private events. Historians have concentrated so much on the noisy sand-box of history, with its fantastic castles and magnificent battles, that they have generally ignored what is going on in the homes around the playground. And where historians usually look to the sandbox battles of yesterday for the causes of those of today, we instead ask how each generation of parents and children creates those issues which are later acted out in the arena of public life.”

Lloyd deMause (1931) American thinker

Source: The History of Childhood (1974), Ch. 1, The Evolution of Childrearing, opening paragraph.

Life , Children , Home , History

“The panic on the part of the State and Union governments could not but produce some more unsavoury results. Muslim mobs in India and elsewhere had been incited by all those who mattered in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. They started taking to the streets and turning violent. The Statesman dated May 13 published the following news date-lined Dhaka, May 12: “At least 12 people were killed and 100 wounded when Bangladesh police fired on a demonstration yesterday in the border town of Chepal Nawabgunj, 320 km. from here. Some 1000 demonstrators, belonging to the fundamentalist Jamaat-i-Islami, were protesting against a case filed by two Indian civilians in Calcutta High Court calling for a ban on the Quran in India. The town chief administrator said today that the police opened fire in self-defence when the demonstrators went on a rampage throwing missiles and setting ablaze government property. Yesterday’s incident followed a demonstration by at least 20,000 Jamaat-i-Islami supporters in the capital on Friday {May 10}.””

Sita Ram Goel book The Calcutta Quran Petition

The demonstrators in Dhaka, according to other reports, were trying to storm the office of India’s High Commission when they were stopped by the police.
The Calcutta Quran Petition (1986)

People , Support , Parting

“I have directed all the wagons that are on the other side to be employed in picking up the scattered boards about the encampments. I believe, from what I saw yesterday in riding over the grounds, they will amount to several thousands. As soon as we have got these together, I purpose to begin upon the barracks. In the mean time, I should be glad to know if your Excellency has any other orders to give respecting the business.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (24 October 1776)

Business , Time

“An honest curator will admit that judgement is fallible, especially for art made yesterday.”

Nicholas Serota (1946) British curator

The Dimbleby Lecture 2000

Art

“Those insolent Germans made me very angry yesterday. I don't know when I have been more angry. Their conduct showed that the old German is still there. Your Brockdorff-Rantzaus will ruin Germany's chances of reconstruction. But the strange thing is that the Americans and ourselves felt more angry than the French and Italians. I asked old Clemenceau why. He said, "Because we are accustomed to their insolence. We have had to bear it for fifty years. It is new to you and therefore it makes you angry."”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Quoted in Lord Riddell's diary entry (8 May 1919), J. M. McEwen (ed.), The Riddell Diaries 1908-1923 (London: The Athlone Press, 1986), p. 275. At the opening of a conference the day before, the German delegate Count Brockdorff-Rantzau unexpectedly made a speech that was regarded as tactless.
Prime Minister

Chance

“Yesterday’s woman was expected to have individual interests, caring for the brightness of the hearth fire and the comforts of the family group. Today she has inherited the community and the community’s welfare. Civics, religion and education have become her field of activity. She is homemaker and citizen.”

Aurelia Henry Reinhardt (1877–1948) American educator and social activist

Writing in Mills Quarterly in 1917, as quoted in Unitarian Universalist Women's Heritage Society Archives, 3 July 2018, Aurelia Isabel Henry Reinhardt (1877-1948) http://www.uuwhs.org/womenwest.php,

Education , Family , Religion , Communication

“The referendum of 5th July will stay in history as a unique moment when a small European nation rose up against debt-bondage…
Soon after the announcement of the referendum results, I was made aware of a certain preference by some Eurogroup participants, and assorted ‘partners’, for my… ‘absence’ from its meetings; an idea that the Prime Minister judged to be potentially helpful to him in reaching an agreement. For this reason I am leaving the Ministry of Finance today.
I consider it my duty to help Alexis Tsipras exploit, as he sees fit, the capital that the Greek people granted us through yesterday’s referendum.
And I shall wear the creditors’ loathing with pride….”

Yanis Varoufakis (1961) Greek-Australian political economist and author, Greek finance minister

Minister-no-more http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2015/07/06/minister-no-more/ at yanisvaroufakis.eu, 2015/07/06; cited in: I shall wear the creditors’ loathing with pride http://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2015/jul/06/yanis-varoufakis-resignation-statement-creditors-loathing-with-pride, in: theguardian.com, 6 July 2015.

People , History , Idea , Help

“She must have received some great news, because yesterday her hair was white and today it is completely blond.”

Adolfo Bioy Casares (1914–1999) Argentine novelist

"Debió de recibir una buena noticia, porque ayer tenía el pelo blanco y hoy apareció completamente rubia."
Descanso de caminantes, 2001.

“Someday I must be able to paint truly remarkable colors. Yesterday I held in my lap a wide, silver-gray satin ribbon which I edged with two narrower black, patterned silk ribbons. And I placed on top of these a plump, bottle-green velvet bow. I'd like to be able to paint something one day in those colors.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

‎note in her Journal, 3 June, 1902; as quoted in Paula Modersohn-Becker, the Letters and Journals, ed. Günter Busch and ‎Liselotte von Reinken (1998), p. 278
1900 - 1905
Variant: Someday I must be able to paint truly remarkable colors. Yesterday I held in my lap a wide, silver-gray satin ribbon which I edged with two narrower black, patterned silk ribbons. And I placed on top of these a plump, bottle-green velvet bow. I'd like to be able to paint something one day in those colors.

Color , Painting

“Whether our ancestors came here on the Mayflower, on slave ships, whether they came to Ellis Island or LAX in Los Angeles, whether they came yesterday or walked this land a thousand years ago our great challenge for the 21st century is to find a way to be One America. We can meet all the other challenges if we can go forward as One America.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

State of the Union Address http://clinton4.nara.gov/WH/New/html/19990119-2656.html (January 19, 1999)
1990s

Angels , Way

“Health care, yesterday was one of the more incredible things I have ever seen, this health care speech with the doctors behind him. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it. I don't understand how the rest of the nation doesn't see this. Or how they don't understand our nation, as we know it, is in peril. Today is the first day that I actually feel like Paul Revere. The British are coming. The British are coming.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

The Glenn Beck Program
Premiere Radio Networks
2010-03-04
After raising fears that our nation is "in peril" because of health care reform, Beck compares himself to Paul Revere
Media Matters for America
2010-03-04
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201003040003
2010s, 2010

Health , Feeling , Understanding , Thinking

“If an article is attractive, or useful, or inexpensive, they'll stop making it tomorrow; if it's all three, they stopped making it yesterday.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

“The hounds are all fagged out after yesterday's Jehovah's Witnesses … we do not want more blood all over the lawns again”

Vivian Stanshall (1943–1995) English musician, artist and author

Sir Henry at Rawlinson End (1978)

“In America's ideal of freedom, the public interest depends on private character — on integrity and tolerance toward others and the rule of conscience in our own lives. Self-government relies, in the end, on the governing of the self.
That edifice of character is built in families, supported by communities with standards, and sustained in our national life by the truths of Sinai, the Sermon on the Mount, the words of the Koran and the varied faiths of our people. Americans move forward in every generation by reaffirming all that is good and true that came before — ideals of justice and conduct that are the same yesterday, today and forever.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2005, Second Inaugural Address (January 2005)

Life , People , Truth , Family

“Our memory is like that burning scrap of paper. We use it to light up the past. First of all our own, and then we ask old people to tell us what they remember. After that we look for letters written by people who are already dead. And in this way we light our way back. There are buildings that are just for storing old scraps of paper that people once wrote on – they are called archives. In them you can find letters written hundreds of years ago. In an archive, I once found a letter which just said: 'Dear Mummy, Dear Mummy, Yesterday we ate some lovely truffles, love from William.”

Ernst Gombrich book A Little History of the World

William was a little Italian prince who lived four hundred years ago.
Source: A Little History of the World (2005), p. 2.

Love , People , Way , Light

“Time keeps running away no matter what's left behind, it keeps on moving
Tomorrow is not today and all of your yesterdays are only a matter of time.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Time
Anastacia (2004)

Time

“Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don't know whether you fellows ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me yesterday what had happened, I felt like the moon, the stars and all the planets had fallen on me. I've got the most terribly responsible job a man ever had.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Comment to reporters on having become president the day before, after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, (13 April 1945) as quoted in Conflict and Crisis : The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945-1948 by Robert J. Donovan, p. 17; also quoted in "Thoughts Of A President, 1945" at Eyewitness to History http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/tru.htm, and TIME magazine (12 April1968) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,838136-9,00.html

Star , Boy

“Only one language comes into question from the start, and that is the physicalist. One can learn the physicalist language from earliest childhood. If someone makes predictions and wants to check them himself, he must count on changes in the system of his senses, he must use clocks and rulers, in short, the person supposedly in isolation already makes use of the ‘intersensual’ and ‘intersubjective’ language. The forecaster of yesterday and the controller of today are, so to speak, two persons.”

Otto Neurath (1882–1945) austrian economist, philosopher and sociologist

Source: 1930s, "Physicalism" (1931), p. 54–55 ; As cited in Jordi Cat, "Otto Neurath", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.),

Question , Sense , Learning , Change

“House Bill No. 5237 passed by the House of Representatives on third and final reading yesterday identifies three (3) classifications of projects contained in this measure, Mr. President. First are the projects that have remained unpaid and outstanding after being declared unconstitutional in the Supreme Court ruling on the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF). These projects, amounting to a total of P1,902,744,124 were commenced or completed prior to the Supreme Court’s PDAF ruling and are all valid obligations incurred by the government.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2014, Speech: Sponsorship Speech for the Supplemental Appropriations for FY 2014

Reading , Housing

“…the Assistant Secretary in Charge of Administration (was) a job which should be undertaken only by a saint or a fool…the House and Senate subcommittees in charge of appropriations, their chairmen, and the Comptroller General's office make this job a perfect hell. Like an ill-tempered chatelaine of a medieval manor, her keys hanging from her belt, Congress parsimoniously and suspiciously doles out supplies for the shortest time, each item meticulously weighed and measured, each request at first harshly denied. Almost simultaneously yesterday's accounting goes on amid screamed accusation and denunciation of every purpose of policy.”

Dean Acheson book Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department

Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969), State Department Management, Leadership Perspectives

Fools , Hell , Time , Housing

“Yesterday's just a memory; tomorrow's never what it's supposed to be.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Infidels (1983), Don't Fall Apart on Me Tonight

Memory

“Nonexistence. The society of the nonexistent. In the street yesterday a nonexistent person trod on my foot with his nonexistent foot.”

Imre Kertész (1929–2016) Hungarian writer

Source: Detective Story (2008), p. 30.

Personality

“The history of human knowledge is nothing more than the realization that yesterday's pieties are actually shameful errors.”

Glenn Greenwald (1967) American journalist, lawyer and writer

"France's censorship demands to Twitter are more dangerous than 'hate speech'" in The Guardian, 2 January 2013. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/02/free-speech-twitter-france

Error , History , Knowledge

“Yesterday, I was sitting on a beanbag chair naked, eating Cheetos and… [audience cheers], I was flippin' through the television and I saw Robert Tilton. He's a televangelist from Dallas, and uh, he was staring at me. And he said this. He said, "Are you lonely?" [shrugs] Yeah. "Have you spent half your life in bars, pursuing sins of the flesh?" [Takes a sip of his drink]This guy's good! "Are you sitting in a beanbag chair, naked, eating Cheetos?" [shocked look] YES, SIR! "Do you feel the urge to get up and send me a thousand dollars?" Close! I thought he was talking about me there for a second! Apparently, I'm ain't the only cat on the block that digs Cheetos.”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

They Call Me Tater Salad

Life , Guy , Feeling , Cats

“Well, I indicated yesterday that I think there were some -- a few staff-level meetings. But, no, I'm making sure that I have a thorough report back to you on that. And I'll get that to you, hopefully very soon.”

Scott McClellan (1968) Former White House press secretary

Source: Press briefing http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2006/01/20060105-2.html, January 5, 2006

Thinking

“When you get to know a fellow, know his joys and know his cares,
When you've come to understand him and the burdens that he bears,
When you've learned the fight he's making and the troubles in his way,
Then you find that he is different than you thought him yesterday.
You find his faults are trivial and there's not so much to blame
In the brother that you jeered at when you only knew his name.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Source: A Heap o' Livin' (1916), When You Know a Fellow, stanza 1, p. 12.

Way , Understanding , Learning , Joy

“.. [to gather] under a new banner.... [that the poets of yesterday's Futurism ] change the means of battle with thought, content, and logic.... advance Alogism after Futurism.”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

Quote of Malevich, Nov. 1915; as cited by Vasilii Rakitin, in The great Utopia - The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915-1932; Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1992, p. 26
1910 - 1920

Change , Future

“Tomorrow everybody - or practically everybody - will have had the education of the upper class of yesterday, and will expect equivalent opportunities. That is why we face the problem of making every kind of job meaningful and capable of satisfying every educated man.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1930s- 1950s, Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New 'Post-Modern' World (1959), p. 121

Education , Problem

“Yesterday I received a letter from my father [ Dutch landscape-painter J. W. Bilders. ] He told me to come at once, to paint the goats in a rather large forest landscape-painting he just finished, which has to be sent away at once [to Saint Petersburg, Russia]. I earn back my travelling [from Leiden to Amsterdam, probably by travel coach] but will loose one day studying in open air. When my goats will succeed, and they are not too stubborn, I'll be back here [in Leiden] tomorrow at one o'clock in the afternoon.”

Gerard Bilders (1838–1865) painter from the Netherlands

Source: 1850's, Vrolijk Versterven' (from Bilders' diary & letters), p. 30 - quote of Bilder's letter to Johannes Kneppelhout, from Leiden, August 1859

Travel , Study , Painting

“I reserve the right to be smarter today than I was yesterday.”

Konrad Adenauer (1876–1967) German statesman, Federal Chancellor of Germany, politician (CDU)

As quoted in Loggers' Handbook Vol. 36 (1976), p. 72; also in North Western Reporter, Second series (1992) https://books.google.com/books?id=I1KaAAAAIAAJ; similar remarks have been attributed to others, including more recent attributions to Adlai Stevenson and Abraham Lincoln.
Variant:
I insist on being smarter today than I was yesterday.
As quoted in How to Win the Meeting (1979) by Frank Snell, p. 3

“Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they're here to stay.
Oh, I believe in yesterday.”

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

"Yesterday", from Help! (1965)
Lyrics, The Beatles

“Yesterday the greatest question was decided which ever was debated in America; and a greater perhaps never was, nor will be, decided among men. A resolution was passed without one dissenting colony, "that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States."”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

On the decision to proclaim independence from British rule, which was made on 2 July 1776, in a letter to Abigail Adams (3 July 1776), published in The Adams Papers: Adams Family Correspondence (2007) edited by Margaret A. Hogan
1770s

Men , Question

“Pat, did you notice yesterday the ACLU, and all the Christ-haters, People For the American Way, NOW, etc. were totally disregarded by the Democrats and the Republicans in both houses of Congress as they went out on the steps and called out on to God in prayer and sang "God Bless America" and said "let the ACLU be hanged"? In other words, when the nation is on its knees, the only normal and natural and spiritual thing to do is what we ought to be doing all the time — calling upon God.”

Jerry Falwell (1933–2007) American evangelical pastor, televangelist, and conservative political commentator

On responses to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, as quoted in AANEWS #958 (14 September 2001)

God , People , Way , Nature

“If a ship has been sunk, I can't bring it up. If it is going to be sunk, I can't stop it. I can use my time much better working on tomorrow's problem than by fretting about yesterday's. Besides, if I let those things get me, I wouldn't last long.”

Ernest King (1878–1956) United States Navy admiral, Chief of Naval Operations

Unsourced

Problem , Time

“Yesterday we fought a great battle and gained a great victory, for which all the glory is due to God alone. Although under a heavy fire for several continuous hours I received only one wound, the breaking of the longest finger of my left hand; but the doctor says the finger may be saved. It was broken about midway between the hand and knuckle, the ball passing on the side next to the forefinger. Had it struck the centre, I should have lost the finger. My horse was wounded, but not killed. Your coat got an ugly wound near the hip, but my servant, who is very handy, has so far repaired it that it doesn't show very much. My preservation was entirely due, as was the glorious victory, to our God, to whom be all the honor, praise, and glory. The battle was the hardest that I have ever been in, but not near so hot in its fire.”

Thomas Jackson (1824–1863) Confederate general

Letter to his wife after the First Battle of Bull Run (22 July 1861); as quoted in Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson by His Widow Mary Anna Jackson (1895) http://books.google.com/books?id=bG2vg5cH004C, Ch. XI : The First Battle of Manassas, p. 178

God , Victory , Horse

“You gave me the key of your heart, my love;
Then why did you make me knock?
Oh that was yesterday, saints above!
And last night—I changed the lock!”

John Boyle O'Reilly (1844–1890) Irish-born poet and novelist

Constancy.

Love , Change , Heart , Night

“Living in dreams of yesterday, we find ourselves still dreaming of impossible future conquest…”

Charles Lindbergh (1902–1974) American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist

As quoted in Lindbergh (1998) by A. Scott Berg, p. 3

Dreams , Future

“Faith is a myth and beliefs shift like mists on the shore; thoughts vanish; words, once pronounced, die; and the memory of yesterday is as shadowy as the hope of to-morrow….
In this world – as I have known it – we are made to suffer without the shadow of a reason, of a cause or of guilt….
There is no morality, no knowledge and no hope; there is only the consciousness of ourselves which drives us about a world that… is always but a vain and fleeting appearance….
A moment, a twinkling of an eye and nothing remains – but a clod of mud, of cold mud, of dead mud cast into black space, rolling around an extinguished sun. Nothing. Neither thought, nor sound, nor soul. Nothing.”

Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-British writer

Letter to Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham, quoted in Joseph Conrad: A Biography (1991) by Jeffrey Meyers, p. 166

World , Faith , Hope , Soul

“Modern disillusion is unlikely to last forever, and nothing rings so hollow as the angst of yesterday.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Reading (1990)

“I was called a terrorist yesterday, but when I came out of jail, many people embraced me, including my enemies, and that is what I normally tell other people who say those who are struggling for liberation in their country are terrorists. I tell them that I was also a terrorist yesterday, but, today, I am admired by the very people who said I was one.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

During his interview at Larry King Live, (16 May 2000). Available Transcript at CNN.com: President Nelson Mandela One-on-One http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0005/16/lkl.00.html
2000s

People , Country

“I will be even briefer than Fabian, I thought I would creep in the back and I don’t have to say anything but what I would like to say and I came in when Eddy was 10 speaking and that was because we had a very constructive meeting with the High Commissioner yesterday and we made some decisions which is always good. Where I disagree sometimes with the Greek Cypriots is that I wanted to vote for Turkey never to be in the European Union! I have no interest in Turkey being in the EU until all, a whole host of problems are resolved and it is of course the Cyprus problem for me first on the agenda, but it is the Kurdish problem, its the military backing barracks, and all the rest of that, you know there are no human rights and many human rights violations in Turkey. So whether it takes 20 years or longer that makes me think that Turkey is using Cyprus as a lever to get as much out of it as is possible and of course the longer it takes for them not to be a member the longer that lever takes and the longer we will have 200,000 or 300,000 Turks settled in Cyprus and that becomes a very much bigger problem than it is now already and I think that I have said that at three or four meetings before rather than us talking about the problem of Cyprus which makes that it becomes a problem for the Republic as it is worldwide known we ought to talk about the problem of Turkey, it is really a 100% Turkish problem that they're not acting in the way in which they should be acting and if that’s the case well shove it to them! And I saw about 50 Turkish … [(A Turkish Cypriot member of the audience accused him saying "You are racist!" and returns his comments…. Many interruptions and heckling from the audience, some Greek Cypriots shouted for the Turkish Cypriot to get out if he didn’t like what he was hearing and three or four police officers arrived in the room.)] Well, it has certainly allocated my speech time and I would only say to the gentleman that we have nothing against honest straightforward Turkish Cypriots but Turkey is using the occupied territory to settle Turkish people they don’t necessarily want in Turkey, many are unemployed, that is not racism, that is a set of true facts and I don’t know whether you are a Turkish Cypriot or a Turkish person I have no disrespect for anybody in the world, but I have deep disrespect for the Turkish Government and the Turkish military and that is my last word on that!”

Rudi Vis (1941–2010) British politician

[At the Friends of Cyprus meeting in the Jubilee Room at the House of Commons, 3rd July 2007] (see External links for transcript)

People , World , Way , Problem

“Ridgway and I climbed a ladder inside the tower to the belfry, spoke to the sergeant observer there, and looked over the landscape on the German side of the river. Then Ridgway turned to the sergeant and at length asked him to put a mortar concentration on a point of woods a few hundred yards away on the German side. The sergeant, unperturbed, cranked his field telephone and spoke to someone at the mortar position in the fields behind the church. "Joe," he said, "remember the dead horse we used as an aiming point yesterday? This target is about fifty over and 100 left. Ten rounds when you're ready." The rounds were in the air almost at once, and their accuracy was impeccable; but I was far from happy about the way my sergeant had shortcut the standard methods of adjusting fire as prescribed in the mortar manual. Although an artilleryman and not the expert on infantry weapons which Ridgway was, I was sure the "dead horse" method of adjustment was not in the book.”

Maxwell D. Taylor (1901–1987) United States general

Source: Swords and Plowshares (1972), p. 94

Books , Way , Horse , Dead

“After viewing a few paintings and a drawing that I had brought in the day before yesterday, Mr. v. d. Kellen [Dutch art-dealer] assured me that there was absolutely no chance of placing anything of mine here, unless it was bought under pressure of a pleasant future, and I think he is right because he showed me various paintings, and specifically those that were closest to my understanding of art were the most difficult to place... I was astounded and furious about such far-reaching stupidity and the pedantry of the man [another art dealer, Herman Deichmann]. All the paintings present were beneath criticism, they were just the usual German Academic-stuff.”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

The Hague, 1882
version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) De heer v.d. Kellen heeft mij na het zien van eenige schilderijtjes en een tekening, die ik eergisteren mee gebracht had, de verzekering gegeven dat er niet de minste kans bestaat hier iets van mij te plaatsen, tenzij dat het gekocht wordt door pressie een prettig vooruitzicht en ik geloof dat hij gelijk heeft want hij liet mij verschillende schilderijen zien en juist degenen die naar mijn begrippen de kunst 't meest nabij kwamen waren 't moeilijkst te plaatsen.. .Ben verbaasd en woedend geweest over de verregaande stupiditeit en pedanterie van dien heer (kunsthandelaar, Herman Deichmann). Alle schilderijen daar aanwezig waren beneden kritiek, waren enfin 't gewone duitsche Academietuig. (Den Haag, 1882)
Quote from Breitner's letter to A.P. van Stolk, undated c. Sept. 1882, (location: The RKD in The Hague); as quoted by Helewise Berger in Van Gogh and Breitner in The Hague, her master-essay in Dutch - Modern Art Faculty of Philosophy University, Utrecht, Febr. 2008]], (translation from the original Dutch, Anne Porcelijn) p. 69.
Following the advice of his maecenas Mr.van Stolk, Breitner had shown his work to two Dutch art-dealers; In this quote he later gives his report and his opinion.
before 1890

Stupidity , Art , Understanding , Thinking

“We are but of yesterday, and yet we have filled all the places that belong to you — cities, islands, forts, towns, exchanges; the military camps themselves, tribes, town councils, the palace, the senate, the market-place; we have left you nothing but your temples.”
Esterni sumus, & vestra omnia implevimus, Vrbes, Insulas, Castella, Municipia, Conciliabula, Castra ipsa, Tribus, Decurias, palatium, Senatum, Forum, sola vobis relinquimus Templa.

Tertullian (155–220) Christian theologian

Tertullian's Plea For Allegiance, A.2

“Only yesterday the practical things of today were decried as impractical, and the theories which will be practical tomorrow will always be branded as valueless games by the practical man of today.”

William Feller (1906–1970) Croatian-American mathematician

Introduction, The Nature of Probability Theory, p. 6.
An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications (Third Edition)

Game

“Probably even more than the architecture I'd be drawn to landscape. That's my first love, landscape... All kinds of landscape, if it's not cluttered up and vandalised. Yesterday we went out to Blenheim, and I love the flatness and the trees. I like all kinds. And where I'm from, the central valley of Virginia, is not one of the most exciting landscapes in the world, but it's one of the most beautiful. It's very beautiful because it has everything. It has mountains, there are streams, there are fields, beautiful trees. And architecture sits very well in it... And I've always lived in the south of Italy, because it’s more excitable. It's volcanic. The land affects people naturally, that's part of the characteristics, for me, of a people, in a sense.”

Cy Twombly (1928–2011) American painter

Source: 2000 - 2011, Cy Twombly, 2000', by David Sylvester (June 2000), p. 173

Love , People , World , Beauty

“What we may do
To-morrow may perhaps decide our fate.
We may have said but yesterday some word
Which may not be recalled.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Corinne’s Chant in the Vicinity of Naples
Translations, From the French

Fate

“Actually, just look at what Osam- Barack Obama said just yesterday. Barack Obama calling on radicals, jihadists of all different types, to come together in Iraq.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

While campaigning in Greenwood, SC; 2007-10-24, quoted in * 2007-10-24
Countdown with Keith Olbermann
MSNBC
Television
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21478412/
2007 campaign for Republican nomination for United States President

“In there. The words hit me hard. In there was my best friend lying on the floor dead. The body. Now I could call it that. Yesterday it was Jack Williams, the guy that shared the same mud bed with me through two years of warfare in the stinking slime of the jungle. Jack, the guy who said he'd give his right arm for a friend and did when he stopped a bastard of a Jap from slitting me in two. He caught the bayonet in the biceps and they amputated his arm.”

Mickey Spillane book I, the Jury

I, the Jury (1947)

Guy , Lying , Dead

“Oh, who would have dared believe that half-crazed I,
I, sick with grief for the buried past,
I, smoldering on a slow fire,
having lost everything and forgotten all,
would be fated to commemorate a man
so full of strength and will and bright inventions,
who only yesterday it seems, chatted with me,
hiding the tremor of his mortal pain.”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

In Memory of M. B.

Pain , Fate , Past

“Yesterday we came across a cemetery that had been completely destroyed by shellfire. The graves had been blown up, and the coffins lay about in the most uncomfortable positions. The shells had unceremoniously exposed their distinguished occupants to the light of day, and bones, hair, and bits of clothing could be seen through cracks in the burst-open coffins.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

letter to his first wife Minna, from the front, 1915; as quoted in Max Beckmann, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 14
1900s - 1920s

Light , Clothes

“And on this terrible day of mourning, it's hard to imagine that a time will come when life at Virginia Tech will return to normal. But such a day will come. And when it does, you will always remember the friends and teachers who were lost yesterday, and the time you shared with them, and the lives they hoped to lead. May God bless you. May God bless and keep the souls of the lost. And may His love touch all those who suffer and grieve.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2007, Virginia Tech Prayer Vigil (April 2007)

Love , Life , God , Hope

“The world goes up and the world goes down,
And the sunshine follows the rain;
And yesterday's sneer and yesterday's frown
Can never come over again.”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

Dolcino to Margaret, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Attributed

World

“Yesterday began like any other day. Students woke up, and they grabbed their backpacks and they headed for class. And soon the day took a dark turn, with students and faculty barricading themselves in classrooms and dormitories -- confused, terrified, and deeply worried. By the end of the morning, it was the worst day of violence on a college campus in American history -- and for many of you here today, it was the worst day of your lives.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2007, Virginia Tech Prayer Vigil (April 2007)

History

“Yesterday I was on the edge
Hoping everything was going to work itself out
A good honest man doing the work of God
Trying to make things better for Him
A lover of life in a school for fools
Trying to find another way to survive”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

Music
Song lyrics, Buddha and the Chocolate Box (1974)

Life , God , School , Hope

“What is that policy? That now that we had got the men we had been fighting against down, we should punish them as severely as possible, devastate their country, burn their homes, break up their very instruments of agriculture.. It is that we should sweep – as the Spaniards did in Cuba; and how we denounced the Spaniards! – the women and children into camps…in some of which the death-rate has risen so high as 430 in the thousand. I do not say for a moment, because I do not think for a moment, that this is the deliberate and intentional policy of His Majesty's Government…at all events, it is the thing which is being done at this moment in the name and by the authority of this most humane and Christian nation. Yesterday I asked the leader of the House of Commons when the information would be afforded, of which we are so sadly in want. My request was refused. Mr. Balfour treated us with a short disquisition on the nature of war. A phrase often used is that "war is war", but when one comes to ask about it one is told that no war is going on, that it is not war. When is a war not a war? When it is carried on by methods of barbarism in South Africa.”

Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1836–1908) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at the Holborn Restaurant (14 June 1901), quoted in John Wilson, C.B.: A Life of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (London: Constable, 1973), p. 349
Leader of the Opposition

Death , Women , Men , War

“Yesterday it was divinely beautiful [at Scheveningen beach]. These barges lay in dense rows against the slope [of the beach], and between them one walked as between a fancy-built city and from above between all those tarred hulls coal-black, gray, green and white, a deep blue sky.”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) Gisteren was 't er [op het strand van Scheveningen] goddelijk mooi. Die schuiten lagen in dichte rijen tegen de [strand]-helling en daartussen ging men als tussen een fantastisch gebouwde stad en van boven tussen die geteerde rompen koolzwart, grijs, groen, [en] wit een diepe blauwe lucht.
In Breitner's letter to A.P. van Stolk, nr. 49, Den Haag 17 Dec. 1883; in the RKD-Archive, The Hague; as cited in the master-thesis Van Gogh en Breitner in Den Haag, Helewise Berger, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands, p. 31
In 1881 already Breitner had rendered the surroundings of Scheveningen in the large 'Panorama of Mesdag', assisting Mesdag in this huge project
before 1890

Beauty

“Implementing best practice is copying yesterday; innovation is inventing tomorrow.”

Paul Sloane (1950) British author and puzzle designer

Source: Quoted in "Paul Sloane Quotes on Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/770591-implementing-best-practice-is-copying-yesterday-innovation-is-inventing-tomorrow/ (1 April 2013)

“Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.”

Khalil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese artist, poet, and writer

Children of Gods, Scions of Apes
The Vision: Reflections on the Way of the Soul (1994)

Love , Truth , Beauty

“Rudolf Hess, Hitler's future deputy, who recently had moved to Munich and now lived in Elisabethstraße, close to the barracks in which Hitler resided at the time, did not think that the Soviet Republic was something worth getting upset about… Hess wrote to his parents on April 23. 'I have not experienced any unrest at all. Yesterday we had an orderly march with red flags, nothing else out of the ordinary.”

Thomas Weber (historian) (1974) German historian

Source: Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi (2017), p. 47

Thinking , Parent , Time , Future

“Speech is an acoustic reality, writing a visual one. Performance of the former has been perfected through a million years of natural selection in the evolutionary process. The latter is a trick which we began to learn only yesterday (in terms of evolutionary time). To "hear" language (and to "say" it) is programmed in our genes; to "see" it (and "read" it) is not.”

Eric A. Havelock (1903–1988) 1903-1988, British classical philologist

"Chinese Characters and the Greek Alphabet" in Sino-Platonic Papers, 5 (December 1987)

Nature , Reality , Learning , Time

“Between the black of yesterday and the white of tomorrow is the great gray of today, filled with nostalgia and fear of the future.”

Roger Zelazny book He Who Shapes

He Who Shapes (1965)

Fear , Nostalgia , Future

“Yesterday I saw Mr. Thackeray. He dined here with some other gentlemen. He is a very tall man — above six feet high, with a peculiar face — not handsome, very ugly indeed, generally somewhat stern and satirical in expression, but capable also of a kind look. He was not told who I was, he was not introduced to me, but I soon saw him looking at me through his spectacles; and when we all rose to go down to dinner he just stepped quietly up and said “Shake hands”; so I shook hands. He spoke very few words to me, but when he went away he shook hands again in a very kind way. It is better, I should think, to have him for a friend than an enemy, for he is a most formidable-looking personage. I listened to him as he conversed with the other gentlemen. All he says is most simple, but often cynical, harsh, and contradictory.”

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) English novelist and poet

Charlotte Brontë, on William Makepeace Thackeray. Charlotte Brontë and Her Circle, (by Clement King Shorter) (1896)

Way , Thinking

“The crisis of yesterday is the joke of to-morrow.”

H. G. Wells (1866–1946) English writer

You Can't be Too Careful (1941)

“In a racially diverse society, it makes sense to phase out state sanction for the battle flag — as South Carolina governor Nikki Haley advocated yesterday, in calling on the state legislature to vote for the removal of the battle flag that has been flying over the grounds of the state capitol…”

Victor Davis Hanson (1953) American military historian, essayist, university professor

2010s, America: One Nation, Indivisible (2015)

Sense , Flying

“The Athenian empire lasted for fifty years at the most, and the stupendous creation of Alexander the Great for less. What has been the fate of succeeding imperialisms? That of Spain endured on the grand scale for little more than a century; that of Napoleon for a decade; the British Empire is less than two centuries old, and in its present form is a thing of yesterday. In the brief span of recorded history empires have had a shorter life than many monarchies, theocracies, and even republics. The Augustan alone reached a venerable age. In the coming of Christianity it had to face the greatest of all historic convulsions, but such was its potency that it weathered the storm and influenced profoundly the organization of the Christian church.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

Augustus (1937)

Life , Fate , Age , History

“The holiest, cruellest pains I feel,
Die stillborn, because old men squeal
For something new: "Write something new:
We've read this poem — that one too,
And twelve more like 'em yesterday?"”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"To An Ungentle Critic"
Fairies and Fusiliers (1917)

Men , Pain , Feeling , Reading

“This conversation is bound to turn up. Two guys in a street meet each other, and one of them says, "Hey, did you hear? Phil Davis died." "Phil Davis? I just saw him yesterday." "Yeah? … Didn't help. He died anyway. Apparently, the simple act of you seeing him did not slow his cancer down. In fact, it may have made it more aggressive. You know, you could be the cause for Phil's death. How do you live with yourself?"”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

"Death"
It's Bad for Ya (2008)

Death , Guy , Help

“Morning newspapers are yesterday's news; social media news are the now moments.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Facebook Nation: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2014

“As yesterday's positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

In speech http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2623880720070926 to schoolchildren in New York City, urging Congress to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act, (September 26, 2007) Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ej7ZEnjSeA&feature=related
2000s, 2007

Children , Learning

“During the LA riots English people were trying to sympathize with me, "Oh Bill, crime is horrible. If it's any consolation, crime is awful here, too." Shut up. This is Hobbiton and I'm Bill-bo Hicks … You gotta see English crime. It's hilarious. You don't know if you're reading the front page or the comic section over there. I swear to God. I read an article front page of the paper one day, in England: "Yesterday, some hooligans knocked over a dustbin in Shaftesbury." … Wooooo. The hooligans are loose! The hooligans are loose! … What if they become ruffians? I would hate to be a dustbin in Shaftesbury tonight. [to the tune of "Behind Blue Eyes" by The Who] "No one knows what it's like … to be a dustbin … in Shaftesbury … with hooligans …"”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Arizona Bay (1997)

God , Hate , People , Reading

“No more stress, now I'm straight
Now I get it, now I take time to think
Before I make mistakes just for my family's sake
part of me left yesterday
The heart of me is strong today
No regrets I'm blessed to say that old me dead and gone away”

T.I. (1980) American rapper, record producer, actor, and businessman from Georgia

"Dead and Gone".

Family , Thinking , Strong , Time

Quotes about yesterday page 4

Quotes about yesterday
page 4