Past Quotes

Thank you for your revelations of government wrongdoing over the past week, You have done the country a great public service.

John Kiriakou

Forget not your past, for in the future it may help you grow

J M Barrie

An expert is someone who knows a lot about the past.

Tom Hopkins

Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The value of the beans for oil production, as well as for human food, has become recognized so quickly and so generally during the past year that the crop has acquired a commercial standing far in excess of its previous status.

David F. Houston

Traditionalists are pessimists about the future and optimists about the past.

Lewis Mumford

A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.

Marcus Garvey

Things that are done, it is needless to speak about; things that are past it is needless to blame.

Confucius

The form of my poem rises out of a past that so overwhelms the present with its worth and vision that I'm at a loss to explain my delusion that there exist any real links between that past and a future worthy of it.

Hart Crane

People who are always praising the past And especially the times of faith as best Ought to go and live in the Middle Ages And be burnt at the stake as witches and sages.

Stevie Smith

History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.

Napoléon Bonaparte

Music is a fluid art form that picks up echoes of the past and weaves them into a new sound. The distinct sounds of the past merge together to create what we know today as gospel, western, folk, or jazz.

Ryan Lewis

The past is our definition. We may strive, with good reason, to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it, but we will escape it only by adding something better to it.

Wendell Berry

My school days were the happiest days of my life; which should give you some indication of the misery I've endured over the past twenty-five years

Paul Merton

One day at a time--this is enough. Do not look back and grieve over the past for it is gone; and do not be troubled about the future, for it has not yet come. Live in the present, and make it so beautiful it will be worth remembering

unknown

Existence is no more than the precarious attainment of relevance in an intensely mobile flux of past, present, and future.

Sontag, Susan

Every man is his own ancestor, and every man his own heir. He devises his own fortune, and he inherits his own past.

Francis Herbert Hedge

Good history is a question of survival. Without any past, we will deprive ourselves of the defining impression of our being.

Ken Burns

There is never finality in the display terminal's screen, but an irresponsible whimsicality, as words, sentences, and paragraphs are negated at the touch of a key. The significance of the past, as expressed in the manuscript by a deleted word or an inserted correction, is annulled in idle gusts of electronic massacre.

Alexander Cockburn

A great source of calamity lies in regret and anticipation; therefore a person is wise who thinks of the present alone, regardless of the past or future.

Oliver Goldsmith

The day is past when schools could afford to give sufficient time and attention to the teaching of the ancient languages to enable the student to get that enjoyment out of classical literature that made the lives of our grandfathers so rich.

James Loeb

A man's memory is bound to be a distortion of his past in accordance with his present interests, and the most faithful autobiography is likely to mirror less what a man was than what he has become.

Fawn M. Brodie

Water is essential for all dimensions of life. Over the past few decades, use of water has increased, and in many places water availability is falling to crisis levels. More than eighty countries, with forty percent of the worldís population, are already facing water shortages, while by year 2020 the worldís population will double. The costs of water infrastructure have risen dramatically. The quality of water in rivers and underground has deteriorated, due to pollution by waste and contaminants from cities, industry and agriculture. Ecosystems are being destroyed, sometimes permanently. Over one billion people lack safe water, and three billion lack sanitation; eighty per cent of infectious diseases are waterborne, killing millions of children each year.

World Bank Institue

For other nations, utopia is a blessed past never to be recovered; for Americans it is just beyond the horizon.

Henry A. Kissinger