Past quotes
10.5K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside past — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"I can say that I am only human and I have made mistakes. I can say that I try to live my life in the most true, honest way that I can. I am not perfect, no one is. No one is harder on me than me. No one can please everyone. No one can live in the past and expect to grow. I have been moving forward and hope that I am not defined by just a few moments in my life but all of the moments that will make up my life."
"Life is divided into three terms - that which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present, to live better in the future."
"Education must be a great equaliser in our society. It must be the tool to level the differences that our various social systems have created over the past thousands of years."
"People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past."
"Consequences from evil will make your past haunt you"
"What I may call the messages of Brave New World, but it is possible to make people contented with their servitude. I think this can be done. I think it has been done in the past. I think it could be done even more effectively now because you can provide them with bread and circuses and you can provide them with endless amounts of distractions and propaganda."
"A man's eyes should be torn out if he can only see the past"
"A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future."
"Don't start your day with broken pieces of the past. Yesterday ended last night. Today is a brand new day and it's yours."
"The past becomes a texture, an ambience to our present."
"Well, you know, the mind is nothing. The mind is only a bunch of thoughts. Thoughts about the past and the future, that is all a mind is. But, the Heart is a center of stillness, of quietness, of Absolute Peace. When you rest your mind in your heart, you feel a joy and a bliss that overwhelms you, and you will Know. Surrender your mind to your Heart, and you will feel it."
"Some people live as though they are already dead. There are people moving around us who are consumed by their past, terrified of their future, and stuck in their anger and jealousy. They are not alive; they are just walking corpses."
"Instead of looking at the past, I put myself ahead twenty years and try to look at what I need to do now in order to get there then."
"We must act to shape and mold the future, and leave our imprint on events as they slip past into history."
"Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?" That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future."
"When we think we have been hurt by someone in the past, we build up defenses to protect ourselves from being hurt in the future. So the fearful past causes a fearful future and the past and future become one."
"Women, in general, are not part of the corruption of the past, so they can give a new kind of leadership, a new image for mankind."
"To build up a future, you have to know the past."
"He does not ask much of us, merely a thought of Him from time to time, a little act of adoration, sometimes to ask for His grace, sometimes to offer Him your sufferings, at other times to thank Him for the graces, past and present, He has bestowed on you, in the midst of your troubles to take solace in Him as often as you can. Lift up your heart to Him during your meals and in company; the least little remembrance will always be the most pleasing to Him. One need not cry out very loudly; He is nearer to us than we think."
"I always live in the present. I don’t know the future and no longer have the past. The former oppresses me as the possibility of everything, the latter as the reality of nothing."
