"There's no future in our past. Just experience. We want to return to it, but we don't want to close the door on it either."
Read quote
8 likes
Past quotes
Past
10.5K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Topics related to Past
Browse quotes that often appear alongside past — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Past quotes (page 60 of 526)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"We go through the present blindfolded... Only later, when the blindfold is removed and we examine the past, do we realize what we've been through and understand what it means."
Read quote
8 likes
"[Raphael's] great superiority is due to the instinctive sense which, in him, seems to desire to shatter form. Form is, in his figures, what it is in ourselves, an interpreter for the communication of ideas and sensations, an exhaustless source of poetic inspiration. Every figure is a world in itself, a portrait of which the original appeared in a sublime vision, in a flood of light, pointed to by an inward voice, laid bare by a divine finger which showed what the sources of expression had been in the whole past life of the subject."
Read quote
8 likes
"The river is everywhere at the same time . . . everywhere and the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future."
Read quote
8 likes
"We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship."
Read quote
7 likes
"In the past, human society provided encouragement and opportunity for people to extend support to each other, especially in highly stressful situations."
Read quote
7 likes
"You and I are standing this very second at the meeting place of two eternities: the vast past that has endured forever, and the future that is plunging on to the last syllable of recorded time. We can't possible live in either of those eternities - no, not even for a split second. But, by trying to do so, we can wreck both our bodies and our minds. So let's be content to live the only time we can possible live: from now until bedtime."
Read quote
7 likes
"We must beware of the Past, mustn't we? I mean that any fixing of the mind on old evils beyond what is absolutely necessary for repenting our own sins and forgiving those of others is certainly useless and usually bad for us. Notice in Dante that the lost souls are entirely concerned with their past! Not so the saved."
Read quote
7 likes
"I am still there, at that distant place in time, I never left it, but live expanded in the past, or out of it."
Read quote
7 likes
"To be free of time is to be free of the psychological need of past for your identity and future for your fulfillment"
Read quote
7 likes
"Why does the mind habitually deny or resist the Now? Because it cannot function and remain in control without time, which is past and future, so it perceives the timeless Now as threatening. Time and mind are in fact inseparable."
Read quote
7 likes
"My school days were the happiest days of my life; which should give you some indication of the misery I've endured over the past twenty-five years."
Read quote
7 likes
"Obviously the facts are never just coming at you but are incorporated by an imagination that is formed by your previous experience. Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts."
Read quote
7 likes
"We have spent the best part of the past century enthusiastically testing the world to utter destruction; not looking closely enough at the long-term impact our actions will have."
Read quote
7 likes
"Culture is a slingshot moved by the force of its past"
Read quote
7 likes
"There are no accidents in my philosophy. Every effect must have its cause. The past is the cause of the present, and the present will be the cause of the future. All these are links in the endless chain stretching from the finite to the infinite."
Read quote
7 likes
"To undo a mistake is always harder than not to create one originally but we seldom have the foresight. Therefore we have no choice but to try to correct our past mistakes."
Read quote
7 likes
"Oh, it is not death that frightens me, but the impossibility of imparting some meaning to my past."
Read quote
7 likes
"When the past has passed from you at last, let go. Then climb down and begin the rest of your life. With great joy."
Read quote
7 likes
"You can also make explicit certain social problems which, again, would be prejudged or not encountered at all in real life, because people have set up defenses against it. Fantasy allows you to get past defenses."
Read quote
7 likes