Quotes About Past

What the advocates of our dangerous and deepening social amnesia don't understand is how deeply the past holds the future in its grip—even, and perhaps especially, when it remains unacknowledged.

We are runaway slaves from our own past, and only by turning to face the hounds can we find our freedom beyond them.

The only difference between a saint and a sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds by Daniel C. Dennett. How consciousness arises, and how much it depends on a sense of past, present, and future (plus a lot of other interesting insights).

Regret is past-tense decision making.

Qué coste te ha supuesto cada creencia o convencimiento en el pasado y qué coste le ha supuesto a la gente que has amado en el pasado?

y qué coste le ha supuesto a la gente que has amado en el pasado?

Yo procuro aprender del pasado sin dejarme inspirar por él. La gran pregunta que me hago siempre es, "¿Qué querían hacer y por qué funcionó?".

History is never the simple recounting of the past as it really was. It is inevitably an interpretation of the past, a retrospective vision of the past, which is limited both by the sources themselves and by the historian who selects and interprets them.

In Europe's Neolithic past, long, long ago when human communities were mostly tribes, in the ancient days of our ancestors well before the introduction of any spiritual path we know—or could possibly imagine—earth-centered spiritual practices were customary.

While it may sound spiritual, the common practice of telling people to forget their lives over the past six days so that they can truly worship God for the next hour smacks more of Greek dualism than a biblical view of a spiritual person. Our lives over the past six days are what God is most interested in! A recognition of the Heat we all face will lead us to bring our messy lives before him.

History permits us to be responsible: not for everything, but for something... History gives us the company of those who have done and suffered more than we have.

In the politics of eternity, the seduction by a mythicized past prevents us from thinking about possible futures. The habit of dwelling on victimhood dulls the impulse of self-correction.

In the politics of eternity, the seduction by a mythicised past prevents us from thinking about possible futures. The habit of dwelling on victimhood dulls the impulse of self-correction.

History does not repeat, but it does instruct. As

Eternity politicians bring us the past as a vast misty courtyard of illegible monuments to national victimhood, all of them equally distant from the present, all of them equally accessible for manipulation.

defense of states and rights is impossible to undertake if no one learns from the past or believes in the future.

No accumulation of good, no matter how vast, undoes an evil; no rescue of the future, no matter how successful, undoes a murder in the past.

I chewed into the wreck of the world, into the neckbone of the past that pursued me. All the while, I moved toward extinction, bearing the burden of damage, language of the protector.

Affascinato, come sono sempre stato, dalla ricca certezza del passato, e confuso dall'incertezza del futuro con le sue troppe possibilità, avevo preso il presente solo come materiale di cui godere una volta che fosse diventato passato. E così, il presente m'era sempre sfuggito.

Il passato è un'indispensabile guida per chi vuol visitare il presente o immaginarsi il futuro. In tutti i miei viaggi mi porto sempre dietro i libri di qualcuno che ha percorso quella strada prima di me. Non solo mi fanno compagnia, ma me ne servo come termine di paragone, come misura di quello che vedo.

Il passato è un'indispensabile guida per chi vuol visitare il presente o immaginarsi il futuro.

A man who denies his past is a man who truly denies himself a future, for he refuses to know himself, and to deny knowledge of oneself is to stumble through life as handicapped as the blind mute.

I am haunted by every person I have ever loved.