Quotes About Past

Politics is a story about the relationship between the past and the future; history is a story about the relationship between the past and the present. It's what history and politics share - a vantage on the past - that makes writing the history of politics fraught. And it's what they don't share that makes the study of history vital. Politics is accountable to opinion; history is accountable to evidence.

History is the art of making an argument about the past by telling a story accountable to evidence.

To treat the founding documents as Scripture would be to become a slave to the past. "Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched," Jefferson conceded. But when they do, "They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human."33

Fiction is the history of the obscure.

To treat the founding documents as Scripture would be to become a slave to the past. "Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched," Jefferson conceded. But when they do, "They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human.

To treat the founding documents as Scripture would be to become a slave to the past.

Nothing is as far away as one minute ago

It is difficult to live in the present, ridiculous to live in the future, and impossible to live in the past. Nothing is as far away as one minute ago.

Tonight you will be visited by three spirits, the ghosts of indictment past, present and future. They will teach you the true meaning of 'you are still a scumbag criminal.

We can know what was, but not what might have been.

I push him from my mind. This is no act of easy omission on my part; I do not consign him casually to a forgotten past. It is rather an act of will--a kind of self-performed surgery on my soul...the bloodiest of mutilations.

Respect the past but focus on your new future if you decide to divorce!

Take time to gather up the past so that you will be able to draw from your experience and invest them in the future.

A wife lasts only for the length of the marriage, but an ex-wife is there for the rest of your life.

A person is formed by experiences. The past is a blind sculptor. To deny that artist his masterwork is to mock your own experience.

Somehow love from the past can be felt in the present and accompany us on our journey into the future.

As we journey into our future, we begin to understand our past in ways that help us travel today.

Technology has saved us money in some circumstances, but it has really afforded us the ability to cover stories from locations we might not have been able to in the past.

We've uncovered some embarrassing ancestors in the not-too-distant past. Some horse thieves, and some people killed on Saturday nights. One of my relatives, unfortunately, was even in the newspaper business.

Events, however, are written in ink the moment they occur, and cannot be erased.

We are what we are because of what we've been

Who knows what's for true once a time is past? There's no way to prove how something was that's gone. And if a time is gone, what does it matter? It's all rain into rivers now.

Saying good-bye to them was like saying good-bye to some people who used to know me when I was a little kid. Like saying good-bye to zombies. Good-bye to a memory. Good-bye to dust. The real good-bye happened a long, long time ago.

Vecchio è, quel che di già è fuorviato. Il vecchio ha avuto valore quando era nuovo...