Quotes About Past

Todo nuestro presente estaba hecho de pasado.

O português confessa sentir inveja de não ter duas línguas. E poder usar uma delas para perder o passado. E outra para ludibriar o presente.

Mi pecado se volvía más grave debido a los tiempos de crisis en que vivíamos. Cuantas más certezas nos robaba la guerra, más carecíamos de la seguridad de un pasado hecho de orden y obediencia.

Aqui só há outroras, isto é água riscando fósforos.

Afinal, em meio da vida sempre se faz a inexistente conta: temos mais ontens ou mais amanhãs?

it was like '65 or '68 again

Modern armies are obsessed with the military learning cycle, of learning from past 'best practice' and mistakes. The problem is which part of the past provides the lessons.

I cannot read souls as well as Don Matteo does, but I see that in your past you have suffered from that great wound which afflicts modern man." "Which is. . .?" "The temptation to absolute despair.

Fear is a memory of better times. Fear is a dream.

Without a past you can't have a future.

A story can be new and yet tell about olden times. The past comes into existence with the story.

I loved learning about the history of things

That's how it is in Faulkner's South: a land where the dead past walks, not was but is, and burning always in one's mind.

Keep in mind that no matter how successful you were in dancing your animal, that in itself is not proof that you still have its power. You may only be dancing a memory. A successful experience does suggest, however, that you may have at least had such a guardian spirit in the past, if not now. The dancing itself, however, is no proof in itself, one way or another.

The notion that one must know history in order to understand the present has a certain justification when applied to the history of events, but not for the structural history of society. Rather, the opposite is the case: to examine the *constitution* of a particular social and economic structure, one has to be already familiar with the *completed* structure. Only then will one know what to look for in history.

Nostalgia n-are insa nici in clin, nici in maneca cu estetica, nu e nici macar legata de amintirile fericite; ai nostalgia unui anume loc pentru ca pur si simplu ai trait acolo, bine sau rau nici nu conteaza, trecutul e intotdeauna frumos, ca si viitor de altfel, doar prezentul doare, doar prezentul pe care il tarasti dupa tine ca pe un butoi mustind de suferinta, intre doua nesfarsiri de blanda fericire.

When I visit the past now, it is for wisdom and experience, not for regret or shame.

But I knew better: No matter where you go, the past floods back. You can try like the dickens, but you can't escape fate.

After all, the past is our only real guide to the future, and historical analogies are instruments for distilling and organizing the past and converting it to a map by which we can navigate.

The values, the programs, the formula, the determination, and the patriotism responsible for America's past success are still here to be tapped.

Maybe Beijing kept tearing itself down to bury its unexamined past. Memories didn't stick to the sleek sides of skyscrapers. Make the sofas thick, the music loud, the televisions large, the cars fast. Blur and round and smooth the past until it becomes as rumored as this disappearing hútòng. Older people will say it was there, they saw it. Their younger listeners will nod politely, unable to imagine something they'd never seen.

It's History that's caused all the troubles in the past.

What is required of philosophical research is that it be a critique of the present. In disclosing the past in an original manner, the past is no longer seen to be merely a present that preceded our own present. Rather, it is possible to emancipate the past so that we can find in it the authentic roots of our existence and bring it into our own present as a vital force. Historical consciousness liberates the past for the future, and it is then that the past gains force and becomes productive.

A recorded past is no more than a bygone present composed of the footprints made by human beings actually going somewhere but not knowing (in any extended sense), and certainly not revealing to us, how, they came to be afoot on these particular journeys.