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 was happy, I knew that. While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it do we suddenly realize - sometimes with astonishment - how happy we had been."
"The past attracts me, the present frightens me, because the future is death."
"It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important."
"The past is never dead. It's not even past."
"The main object of teaching is not to give explanations, but to knock at the doors of the mind."
"Americans care about their past, but for short term gain they ignore it and tear down everything that matters."
"Our scars make us know that our past was for real"
"One thing that has helped me personally in the past was to stop interfering with the people around me and getting frustrated when I couldn’t change them. Instead of intrusion and passivity, may I suggest submission? Some people make the mistake of confusing “submission” with “weakness”, whereas it is anything but. Submission is a form of peaceful acceptance of the terms of the universe, including the things we are currently unable to change or comprehend."
"Forget the past, for it is gone from your domain! forget the future, for it is beyond your reach! control the present! Live supremely well now! This is the way of the wise."
"The person who is to succeed will never let his mind dwell on past mistakes. He will forgive the past in his life and in the lives of other people. If he makes a mistake he will at once forgive it."
"Memory is a snare, pure and simple; it alters, it subtly rearranges the past to fit the present."
"Love isn't love until it's past."
"You have to know the past to understand the present."
"When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago."
"The best prophet of the future is the past."
"An inflated consciousness is always egocentric and conscious of nothing but its own existence. It is incapable of learning from the past, incapable of understanding contemporary events, and incapable of drawing right conclusions about the future. It is hypnotized by itself and therefore cannot be argued with. It inevitably dooms itself to calamities that must strike it dead."
"Good friends we have had, oh good friends we've lost along the way In this bright future you can't forget your past So dry your tears I say."
"The standard formulation on remedy is that it ought to cure past violations and prevent their recurrence. That's what antitrust is all about."
"Time is not at all what it seems. It does not flow in only one direction, and the future exists simultaneously with the past."
"Our most treasured family heirloom are our sweet family memories. The past is never dead, it is not even past."
