Past quotes

Past

10.5K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.

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Past quotes (page 141 of 526)

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Martin Luther King, Jr. Civil Rights Leader
Past

"Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten. A society is always eager to cover misdeeds with a cloak of forgetfulness, but no society can fully repress an ugly past when the ravages persist into the present. America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay. If it loses the will to finish or slackens in its determination, history will recall its crimes and the country that would be great will lack the most indispensable element of greatness — justice."

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Martin Luther Theologian
Past

"Many demons are in woods, in waters, in wildernesses, and in dark poolly places ready to hurt and prejudice people; some are also in the thick black clouds, which cause hail, lightning and thunder, and poison the air, the pastures and grounds."

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Past

"I begin with songs. They provide a sort of skeleton grammar for me to flesh out. Songs of longing for future tense, songs of regret for past tense, and songs of love for present tense."

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Matthew West Singer-Songwriter
Past

"Any fitness expert will tell you that a strong core is the start to a strong and healthy body. The same is true with our identities. It's about strengthening our core, which requires digging past all of the surface identities that crowd our nametags and remembering that at the deepest level we are God's masterpiece. The stronger our knowledge of the core of who we are, the better we'll be able to deflect the old names and false identities that try to own us."

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May Sarton Poet
Past

"I can tell you that solitude Is not all exaltation, inner space Where the soul breathes and work can be done. Solitude exposes the nerve, Raises up ghosts. The past, never at rest, flows through it."

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Maya Lin Architect, Artist
Past

"I think I needed to really move past my first public work as memorialist, and be equally balanced. It's a bit unusual, to be working between the architecture, the art, and what I would say is a synthesis, the memorials - they're problem solving, but it's very symbolic. You get this triangle; I need to be balanced with those three. They're all equally a part of who I am. I love how different they are, and yet they're coming out the same thing, whatever it is."

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Melanie Brown Singer
Past

"I'm overly excited to finally announce this amazing global partnership deal back home with EMI Music. I know I have mentioned doing music in the past but for legal reasons I was not in a position to release any new music."

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Michael E. Mann Climatologist
Past

"I was interested in variations in temperatures of the oceans over the past millennium. But there are no records of these changes so I had to find proxy measures: coral growth, ice cores and tree rings."

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Michel de Montaigne Philosopher, Writer
Past

"T is one and the same Nature that rolls on her course, and whoever has sufficiently considered the present state of things might certainly conclude as to both the future and the past."

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Michelle Obama Lawyer, Author, First Lady
Past

"Celebrating the holidays in the White House over these past eight years has been a true privilege. We've been able to welcome over half a million guests... our outstanding pastry chefs have baked 200,000 holiday cookies... and Barack [Obama] has treated the American people to countless dad jokes."

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Past

"For historians ought to be precise, truthful, and quite unprejudiced, and neither interest nor fear, hatred nor affection, should cause them to swerve from the path of truth, whose mother is history, the rival of time, the depository of great actions, the witness of what is past, the example and instruction of the present, the monitor of the future."

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Milan Kundera Writer
Past

"This is the real and the only reason for friendship: to provide a mirror so the other person can contemplate his image from the past, which, without the eternal blah-blah of memories between pals, would long ago have disappeared."

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Milan Kundera Writer
Past

"Now time has a very different look; it is no longer the conquering present capturing the future; it is the present conquered and captured and carried off by the past."

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Milan Kundera Writer
Past

"Remembering our past, carrying it around with us always, may be the necessary requirement for maintaining, as they say, the wholeness of the self. To ensure that the self doesn’t shrink, to see that it holds on to its volume, memories have to be watered like potted flowers, and the watering calls for regular contact with the witnesses of the past, that is to say, with friends. They are our mirror; our memory; we ask nothing of them but that they polish the mirror from time to time so we can look at ourselves in it."

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