Past famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
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Science fiction is never about the future, in the same way history is rarely about the past: they're both parable formats for examining or commenting on the present.
-- A. A. Gill -
Often we want people to pray for us and help us, but we always defeat our object when we look too much to them and lean upon them. The true secret of union is for both to look upon God, and in the act of looking past themselves to Him they are unconsciously united.
-- A. B. Simpson -
So with truth - there is a certain moment when one can say, this is the truth and here I put a dot, a stop, and I go to another thing. A judge has to put an end to a deliberation. But for a historian, theres never an end to the past. It can go on and on and on.
-- A. B. Yehoshua -
Far better to think historically, to remember the lessons of the past. Thus, far better to conceive of power as consisting in part of the knowledge of when not to use all the power you have. Far better to be one who knows that if you reserve the power not to use all your power, you will lead others far more successfully and well.
-- A. Bartlett Giamatti -
Any city may have one period of magnificence, like Boston or New Orleans or San Francisco, but it takes a real one to keep renewing itself until the past is perennially forgotten.
-- A. J. Liebling -
In my opinion, most of the great men of the past were only there for the beer - the wealth, prestige and grandeur that went with the power.
-- A. J. P. Taylor -
Like most of those who study history, he (Napoleon III) learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones.
-- A. J. P. Taylor -
The present enables us to understand the past, not the other way round.
-- A. J. P. Taylor -
Every historian loves the past or should do. If not, he has mistaken his vocation; but it is a short step from loving the past to regretting that it has ever changed. Conservatism is our greatest trade-risk; and we run psychoanalysts close in the belief that the only "normal" people are those who cause no trouble either to themselves or anybody else.
-- A. J. P. Taylor -
History is not another name for the past, as many people imply. It is the name for stories about the past.
-- A. J. P. Taylor -
In the past, I used to counter any such notions by asking myself: 'Would you really want President Hattersley?' I now find that possibility rather cheers me up. With his chubby, Dickensian features and his knowledge of T.H. Green and other harmless leftish political classics, Hattersley might not be such a bad thing after all.
-- A. N. Wilson -
I can't tell you where a poem comes from, what it is, or what it is for: nor can any other man. The reason I can't tell you is that the purpose of a poem is to go past telling, to be recognised by burning.
-- A. R. Ammons -
If you don't have a vision for the future, then your future is threatened to be a repeat of the past.
-- A. R. Bernard -
What we have done in the past is not sufficient now to prepare our youth.
-- A. Theodore Tuttle -
The past actually happened. History is what someone took the time to write down.
-- A. Whitney Brown -
It is time, therefore, to abandon the superstition that natural science cannot be regarded as logically respectable until philosophers have solved the problem of induction. The problem of induction is, roughly speaking, the problem of finding a way to prove that certain empirical generalizations which are derived from past experience will hold good also in the future.
-- A.J. Ayer -
I didn't think about anything past tomorrow because anything past tomorrow was just like cloud busting - it depended soley on the person looking at the clouds and it could rain any minute
-- A.S. King -
The experience you’ve had may be unwanted, may amount to nothing but damage and waste, but experience has substance, is factual, authoritative, lives on in your past and affects your present, whatever you attempt to do about it.
-- A.S.A. Harrison -
Through all the relationship stuff I've gone through in the past few years, I know there are fundamental differences in how men and women view sex and how they view their futures.
-- Aaron Eckhart -
How aware were photographers in the past of other visual arts? "No photographer of any distinction at all could approach his work without some awareness of what was going on in other visual media, and for that matter neither the painter nor the draughtsman could ignore photography."
-- Aaron Scharf -
With enough of us, around the world, we'll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge - we'll make it a thing of the past.
-- Aaron Swartz -
We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks... With enough of us, around the world, we’ll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge — we’ll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?
-- Aaron Swartz -
The open ocean often takes you past your physical limits and when it does, sailing becomes a mental game.
-- Abby Sunderland -
Over the past few years, the road to confrontation has shown its consequences: loss of innocent lives, destruction and fear. Most costly, however, was the loss of hope. The most precious gift that you can present to your peoples over the coming weeks is renewed hope born out of tangible progress on the ground.
-- Abdallah II -
The young women of today, free to study, to speak, to write, to choose their occupation, should remember that every inch of this freedom was bought for them at a great price. It is for them to show their gratitude by helping onward the reforms of their own times, by spreading the light of freedom and of truth still wider. The debt that each generation owes to the past it must pay to the future.
-- Abigail Scott Duniway -
The debt that each generation owes to the past, it must pay to the future.
-- Abigail Scott Duniway -
Enjoy the present hour, Be thankful for the past, And neither fear nor wish Th' approaches of the last.
-- Abraham Cowley -
Nothing is there to come, and nothing past, But an eternal Now does always last.
-- Abraham Cowley -
Who lets slip fortune, her shall never find: Occasion once past by, is bald behind.
-- Abraham Cowley -
Michael Jackson has an anti-Semitic streak, and hasn't learned from his past mistakes. It seems every time he has a problem in his life, he blames it on Jews.
-- Abraham Foxman -
When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendors of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
There are no accidents in my philosophy. Every effect must have its cause. The past is the cause of the present, and the present will be the cause of the future. All these are links in the endless chain stretching from the finite to the infinite.
-- Abraham Lincoln -
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise to the occasion. We cannot escape history. We will be remembered in spite of ourselves. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honour or dishonour, to the last generation. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, our last best hope of Earth.
-- Abraham Lincoln -
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.
-- Abraham Lincoln -
But let the past as nothing be. For the future my view is that the fight must go on.
-- Abraham Lincoln -
Thus let bygones be bygones. Let past differences, as nothing be.
-- Abraham Lincoln -
I believe in black holes. I believe that as the universe empties into nothingness, past and future will smack together in the last swirl around the drain.
-- Abraham Verghese -
The Futurists?.... Well, of course, they are already past.
-- Ada Leverson -
Every creative act draws on the past whether it pretends to or not. It draws on what it knows. There's no such thing, really, as a creative act in a vacuum.
-- Ada Louise Huxtable -
The skyscraper and the twentieth century are synonymous; the tall building is the landmark of our age. ... Shaper of cities and fortunes, it is the dream, past and present, acknowledged or unacknowledged, of almost every architect.
-- Ada Louise Huxtable -
There is no future for a people who deny their past.
-- Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. -
What interests us about the past is at least partly a function of what bothers us or makes us curious in the present.
-- Adam Garfinkle -
The past is so often unknowable not because it is befogged now but because it was befogged then, too, back when it was still the present. If we had been there listening, we still might not have been able to determine exactly what Stanton said. All we know for sure is that everyone was weeping, and the room was full.
-- Adam Gopnik -
The future will be like the past, in the sense that, no matter how amazing or technologically advanced a society becomes, the basic human rhythm of petty malevolence, sordid moneygrubbing, and official violence, illuminated by occasional bursts of loyalty or desire or tenderness, will go on.
-- Adam Gopnik -
Use your imagination only on the future, never on the present or the past.
-- Adam Johnson -
Any time you lose a few in a row, you have to hit reset and come back tomorrow and do the best you can to forget about how the past series went. It's frustrating. Individually it's frustrating. I'm trying to figure it out. And I know as a team, it sucks losing a few in a row any time. So you know, we'll snap out of it.
-- Adam LaRoche -
There comes a point in your life when you realize: Who matters, Who never did, Who won't anymore, And who always will. So, don't worry about people from your past, there's a reason why they didn't make it to your future.
-- Adam Lindsay Gordon -
Don't worry about people from your past there's a reason why they didn't make it to your future.
-- Adam Lindsay Gordon -
I do love the films I've done in the past. I work hard in my movies and my friends work hard and we're trying to make people laugh and I'm very proud of that.
-- Adam Sandler -
I don't know what the hell I'm doing; I like what I've been doing. I believe in what I've done in the past and I hope to make a movie that; I hope my kid enjoys the movies I've made and enjoys some of the movies in the future.
-- Adam Sandler -
Euphemisms, vague terminology or calls for discussions with Turkey to get at the truth are just some of the dodges Congress and the administration have used to avoid Turkish discomfort with its Ottoman past.
-- Adam Schiff -
The past is for learning from and letting go. You can't revisit it. It vanishes.
-- Adele Parks -
Give up identification with this mass of flesh as well as with what thinks it a mass. Both are intellectual imaginations. Recognise your true self as undifferentiated awareness, unaffected by time, past, present or future, and enter Peace.
-- Adi Shankara -
QUOTES BOUQUET: The Brightest Future Will Always Be Based On A Forgotten Past...
-- Adnan -
The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions. In this way, the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed.
-- Adolf Hitler -
The world will not help, the people must help themselves. Its own strength is the source of life. That strength the Almighty has given us to use; that in it and through it, we may wage the battle of our life The others in the past years have not had the blessing of the Almighty - of Him who in the last resort, whatever man may do, holds in His hands the final decision. Lord God, let us never hesitate or play the coward
-- Adolf Hitler -
In this hour I would ask of the Lord God only this: that, as in the past, so in the years to come He would give His blessing to our work and our action, to our judgement and our resolution, that He will safeguard us from all false pride and from all cowardly servility, that he may grant to us to find the straight path which His Providence has ordained for the German people, and that he may ever give us the courage to do the right, never to falter, never to yield before any violence, before any danger.
-- Adolf Hitler -
Pride in one's own race - and that does not imply contempt for other races - is also a normal and healthy sentiment. I have never regarded the Chinese or the Japanese as being inferior to ourselves. They belong to ancient civilizations, and I admit freely that their past history is superior to our own. They have the right to be proud of their past, just as we have the right to be proud of the civilization to which we belong. Indeed, I believe the more steadfast the Chinese and the Japanese remain in their pride of race, the easier I shall find it to get on with them.
-- Adolf Hitler -
It would have been more to the point, more honest and more Christian, in past decades not to support those who intentionally destroyed healthy life than to rebel against those who have no other wish than to avoid disease. Moreover, a policy of laissez faire in this sphere is not only cruelty to the individual guiltless victims but also to the nation as a whole... If the Churches were to declare themselves ready to take over the treatment and care of those suffering from hereditary diseases, we should be quite ready to refrain from sterilizing them.
-- Adolf Hitler -
I am beginning with the young. We older ones are used up. Yes, we are old already. We are rotten to the marrow. We have no unrestrained instincts left. We are cowardly and sentimental. We are bearing the burden of a humiliating past, and have in our blood the dull recollection of serfdom and servility. But my magnificent youngsters! Are there finer ones anywhere in the world? Look at these young men and boys! What material! With them, I can make a new world.
-- Adolf Hitler -
It seems we're not only uninformed about our present, we're ignorant of our past.
-- Adora Svitak -
The minutes ticked past. This is why peelers need a book. A wee paperback to stick in your pocket.
-- Adrian McKinty -
Layer upon layer, Italy's storied past unfolds in Robert Kaster's captivating journey along the venerable Queen of Roads. I cannot imagine a more perfect guide to such a rich trove of ancient and modern memories. Illuminating, erudite, entertaining, and evocative.
-- Adrienne Mayor -
... if, as women, we accept a philosophy of history that asserts that women are by definition assimilated into the male universal,that we can understand our past through a male lens--if we are unaware that women even have a history--we live our lives similarly unanchored, drifting in response to a veering wind of myth and bias.
-- Adrienne Rich -
One must be willing to stand alone - in the unknown, with no reference to authority or the past or any of one's conditioning. One must stand where no one has stood before in complete nakedness, innocence, and humility.
-- Adyashanti -
My grandfather was a most gifted person, and amongst his many qualities, one of them had always particularly impressed me. While the past was a book he had read and re-read may times, the future was just one more literary work of art into which he used to pour himself with deep thought and concentration. Innumerable people since his death have told me how he used to read in the future, and this certainly was one of his very great strengths.
-- Aga Khan III -
This only is denied even to God: the power to undo the past.
-- Agathon -
Of this alone, even god is deprived, the power of making things that are past never to have been.
-- Agathon -
What has been done is little-scarcely a beginning; yet it is much in comparison with the total blank of a century past. And our knowledge will, we are easily persuaded, appear in turn the merest ignorance to those who come after us. Yet it is not to be despised, since by it we reach up groping to touch the hem of the garment of the Most High.
-- Agnes Mary Clerke -
The delusions of the past seem fond and foolish. The delusions of the present seem subtle and sane.
-- Agnes Repplier -
The diseases of the present have little in common with the diseases of the past save that we die of them.
-- Agnes Repplier -
In the past, we spoke of poverty, misery only in the south. Now there is a lot of misery, a lot of bad that creates victims in the north as well. This has become manifest: the global system was not made to serve the good of all, but to serve multinational companies.
-- Ahmed Ben Bella -
In the past there was a difference between the conditions in which Hizballah operated in Lebanon and the conditions of resistance operated in Palestine.
-- Ahmed Yassin -
Creativity is the power to reject the past, to change the status quo, and to seek new potential. Simply put, aside from using one's imagination - perhaps more importantly - creativity is the power to act.
-- Ai Weiwei -
The flow of time cleanses the past and heals the wounds in people's hearts. But there are wounds we cant speak of.
-- Ai Yazawa -
History dies without the present. There is no future without the path made to it by the past.
-- Aidan Chambers -
She was--I keep using the past tense; I ought to say she is--one of those people who, at first sight, look plain, are quiet, unassertive, unmemorable even. But who, when they start to talk and you get to know them, become more and more attractive and impressive, and you see that in fact they are beautiful. Not conventionally beautiful, not celebrity beautiful, but beautiful all through.
-- Aidan Chambers -
I mean, I've been stupid in the past, and I've learned from that.
-- Aidan Quinn -
Come near to the holy men and women of the past and you will soon feel the heat of their desire after God. They mourned for Him, they prayed and wrestled and sought for Him day and night, in season and out, and when they found Him, the finding was all the sweeter for the long seeking.
-- Aiden Wilson Tozer -
It struck me then how much the past - not just the past but history and family - was like the ocean tide. It was always the same ocean, but the waves made it fresh and new each time.
-- Aimee Friedman -
But I can't confront the doubts I have. I can't admit that maybe the past was bad, and so, for the sake of momentum I'm condemning the future to death so it can match the past.
-- Aimee Mann -
One of the things I've really gotten past in the last couple of years is the idea of being made uncomfortable by the way things appear, rather than how things are. Clearly in this business you have to contend with a lot of that.
-- Aimee Mann -
When you have abandoned all past and future, it is as if you have come alive. You are here, mindful...the nature of all types of consciousness reveals itself.
-- Ajahn Brahm -
The little babies are missing their families from their past lives. The babies have old souls and the old souls have to shrink to become little babies. The tears loosen their memories so they can slide away. They cry at the life they have lost, and then they cry at everything they'll forget.
-- Akhil Sharma -
I established the rule that once we hire an employee, his school records are a matter of the past and are no longer used to evaluate his work or decide on his promotion.
-- Akio Morita -
In my experience, in the real-estate business past success stories are generally not applicable to new situations. We must continually reinvent ourselves, responding to changing times with innovative new business models.
-- Akira Mori -
CO2 is the exhaling breath of our civilization, literally... Changing that pattern requires a scope, a scale, a speed of change that is beyond what we have done in the past.
-- Al Gore -
There is an old African proverb that says if you want to go quickly, go alone, if you want to go far, go together. We have to go far, quickly, and that means we have to quickly find a way to change the world's consciousness about exactly what we are facing and how we have to work to solve it.
-- Al Gore -
Distributed intelligence is the key to the advancement of human civilization. Dictatorships, communist countries, monarchies in the past all eventually collapsed because of their inefficiency in moving information.
-- Al Gore -
I don't believe in looking past anybody - I wouldn't look past the Little Sisters of the Poor after they stayed up all night.
-- Al McGuire -
Look to the past and remember no empire rises that sooner or later won't fall.
-- Al Stewart -
For at least the past 65 years, liberalism has been nothing if not an attempt to strike a balance between the needs of the community and the needs of individuals, between the need for freedom and the need for order.
-- Alan Brinkley -
To grow, you must be willing to let your present and future be totally unlike your past. Your history is not your destiny.
-- Alan Cohen -
Upgrade your past by seeing it with appreciation.
-- Alan Cohen -
Don't use the past as an excuse to miss out on your future.
-- Alan Cohen -
View the past as your enemy, and it will be an albatross. View it as your friend, and it will give you wings.
-- Alan Cohen -
You change the past when you change the way you see it.
-- Alan Cohen -
I mentioned that one of the tripartite formulas in American worldview involves time: past, present, and future.
-- Alan Dundes
