"Most of us are conditioned for many years to have a political viewpoint - Republican or Democratic, liberal, conservative, or moderate. The fact of the matter is that most of the problems that we now face are technical problems, are administrative problems. They are very sophisticated judgments, which do not lend themselves to the great sort of passionate movements which have stirred this country so often in the past. - They deal with questions which are now beyond the comprehension of most men."
Past quotes
Past
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Past quotes (page 100 of 526)
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"He would be laughed at, that should go about to make a fine dancer out of a country hedger, at past fifty. And he will not have much better success, who shall endeavour, at that age, to make a man reason well, or speak handsomely, who has never been used to it, though you should lay before him a collection of all the best precepts of logic or oratory."
"The thought came over me that never would one full and absolute moment, containing all the others, justify my life, that all of my instants would be provisional phases, annihilators of the past turned to face the future, and that beyond the episodic, the present, the circumstantial, we were nobody."
"I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future . . . I felt myself to be, for an unknown period of time, an abstract perceiver of the world."
"It was very depressing to realize that, when looking around for regimes that have systematically corrupted science within the past century or so, three stood out quite distinctly, head and shoulders above the rest of the herd: Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Bush’s America. At times when working on the three relevant chapters, I had to remind myself which chapter was the one in front of me: the parallels between the three regimes, in terms of their vigorous attempts to trample honest science underfoot, are as horrifically close as that."
"Most of these people will never make the headlines and their names will not appear in Who's Who. Yet when years have rolled past and when the blazing light of truth is focused on this marvelous age in which we live - men and women will know and children will be taught that we have a finer land, a better people, a more noble civilization - because these humble children of God were willing to suffer for righteousness' sake."
"We can only know where we're going if we know where we've been."
"Though one should live through all the time from Adam and all the time to come before the judgment day doing good works, yet he who, energising in his highest, purest part, crosses from time to eternity, verily in the sight of God this man conceives and does far more than anyone who lives throughout all past and future time, because this now includes the whole of time. One master says that in crossing over time into the now each power of the soul will surpass itself. . . ."
"It is past all controversy that what costs dearest is, and ought to be, most valued."
"Reasoning is the pastime of my whole household, and all this reasoning has driven out Reason."
"In the developing world, it's about time that women are on the agenda. For instance, 80 percent of small-subsistence farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are women, and yet all the programs in the past were predominantly focused on men."
"He is a fool who only sees the mischiefs that are past."
"Just dwelling on the past, I think it's really important for me to surround myself with positive people and just work really hard and really make the most out of the opportunity that God has given me, being able to make music, which I always wanted to do."
"Thank you all from the pit of my burning, nauseous stomach for your letters and concern during the past years."
"Vonnegut could not help looking back, despite the danger of being turned metaphorically into a pillar of salt, into am emblem of the death that comes to those who cannot let go of the past"
"If only the sense of actuality can be lulled-and it sleeps for ever in most historians-there is no passion that cannot be gratified in the past."
"Pity wraps the student of the past in an ambrosial cloud, and washes his limbs with eternal youth."
"Why doesn't the past decently bury itself, instead of sitting waiting to be admired by the present?"
"I know the greatness of Christianity; it is a past greatness.. I live in 1924, and the Christian venture is done."
"At the back of my life's horizon, where the dreamings of past lives crowd."