Past quotes
10.5K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside past — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"In the course of a healthy debate, we prioritize different goals, and the different means of reaching them. But without some common baseline of facts, without a willingness to admit new information and concede that your opponent might be making a fair point, and that science and reason matter - then we're going to keep talking past each other, and we'll make common ground and compromise impossible."
"The experience you’ve had may be unwanted, may amount to nothing but damage and waste, but experience has substance, is factual, authoritative, lives on in your past and affects your present, whatever you attempt to do about it."
"I don't pray for anything, but I have used affirmations in the past a few times. They are really a bit more like realizations in that on some level they have already happened."
"For the ego to survive, it must make time - past and future - more important than the present moment."
"In the past, the U.S. has shown its capacity to reinvent its gifts for leadership. During the 1970s, in the aftermath of the Nixon abdication and the Ford and Carter presidencies, the whole nation peered into the abyss, was horrified by what it saw and elected Ronald Reagan as president, which began a national resurgence."
"If you're using your imagination, you tend to look into the past for ideas."
"I think [Donald Trump] does understand that. We talked a great deal about the separation on power and the constitution. And we`re very excited about what he`s doing because what he`s doing is pulling back what we see as unconstitutional executive actions from the past presidents."
"Many people don't allow themselves to love...because there are a lot of things at risk a lot of future and a lot of past."
"People never leave, we are always here in our past and future lives."
"If you have a past with which you feel dissatisfied, then forget it. Now."
"Travelling to past lives is like making a hole in the floor and letting the flames of the fire in the apartment below scorch and burn the present"
"The future would end up finding out the truth about the past."
"She looked at her own past, and, for the first time, she forgave herself: it hadn't been her fault, but the fault of that insecure little boy, who had given up after the first attempt."
"But Greece and her foundations are Built below the tide of war, Based on the crystalline sea Of thought and its eternity; Her citizens, imperial spirits, Rule the present from the past, On all this world of men inherits Their seal is set."
"The day becomes more solemn and serene When noon is past; there is a harmony In autumn, and a lustre in its sky, Which through the summer is not heard or seen, As if it could not be, as if it had not been! Thus let thy power, which like the truth Of nature on my passive youth Descended, to my onward life supply Its calm, to one who worships thee, And every form containing thee, Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind To fear himself, and love all human kind."
"Till the Future dares Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be An echo and a light unto eternity!"
"America comes from a flawed but wonderful idea. Many great things have sprung forth over the past few hundred years but there were deep issues in the beginning that now are starting to show up."
"Look at government programs for the past fifty years. Every single one - except warfare - achieved the exact opposite of its announced goal."
"Capital formation is shifting from the entrepreneur who invests in the future to the pension trustee who invests in the past."
"'Haunted by the past' is a commonplace phrase because it's a commonplace experience. Even if one is not, strictly speaking, 'haunted', the past is perpetually with one in the present, and the longer it grows and the further it recedes the stronger its presence seems to become."
