"The more we idealize the past and refuse to acknowledge our childhood sufferings, the more we pass them on unconsciously to the next generation."
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Past quotes
Past
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Past quotes (page 7 of 526)
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"Past and future have no power over you. Just the present - and even that can be minimized."
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"You got your guards up, I do too, there's things we might discover. Cause you got a past and I do too, we're perfect for each other."
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"Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed."
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"My mission is a cosmic mission. My concern is for all of humanity, and not only this present world, but the world hereafter. My mission penetrates the past, present, and future, and encompasses all humanity."
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"You cannot find yourself by going into the past. You can find yourself by coming into the present."
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"Quit putting yourself in a little box by trying to live consistently with your past and explaining every little action you take. BE YOU. Fully. In this moment. Independent of what others may or may not 'expect' from you."
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"Our task today is to bring India to the threshold of the twenty-first century, free of burden of poverty, legacy of our colonial past, and capable of meeting the rising aspirations of our people."
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"Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living."
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"She saw him the first day on board, and then her heart sank into her shoes as she realized at last how much she wanted him. No matter what his past was, no matter what he had done. Which was not to say that she would ever let him know, but only that he moved her chemically more than anyone she had ever met, that all other men seemed pale beside him."
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"The establishment of democracy on the American continent was scarcely as radical a break with the past as was the necessity, which Americans faced, of broadening this concept to include black men."
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"You have to get past the idea that music has to be one thing. To be alive in America is to hear all kinds of music constantly: radio, records, churches, cats on the street, everywhere music. And with records, the whole history of music is open to everyone who wants to hear it."
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"We all need lots of powerful long range goals to help us past the short-term obstacles"
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"To almost no one's surprise, Astrid said, "Dune, by Frank Herbert. 'I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that bring total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the Fear has gone there will be nothing.'" She and Lana together spoke the last phrase of the incantation. "'Only I will remain."
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"IN ALL MY FILMS, IT SEEMED IMPORTANT TO ME TO REMIND THE AUDIENCE TO THE FACT THAT THEY ARE NOT ALONE, LOST IN AN EMPTY UNIVERSE, BUT THAT THEY ARE CONNECTED BY INNUMERABLE THREADS WITH THEIR PAST AND PRESENT, THAT THROUGH CERTAIN MYSTICAL WAYS, EVERY HUMAN BEING REALIZES THE RAPPORT WITH THE WORLD AND THE LIFE OF HUMANITY."
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"We should not lay all past mistakes on Chairman Mao. So we must be very objective in assessing him. His contributions were primary, his mistakes secondary. In China, we will inherit the many good things in Chairman Mao's thinking while at the same time explaining clearly the mistakes he made."
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"I have great expectations for the future, because the past was highly overrated."
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"The greatest weapon the colonial powers have used in the past against our people has always been his ability to divide and conquer. If I take my hand and slap you, it might sting you because these digits are separated. But all I have to do to put you back in your place is bring those digits together."
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"In every revolution there intrude, at the side of its true agents, men of a different stamp; some of them survivors of and devotees to past revolutions, without insight into the present movement, but preserving popular influence by their known honesty and courage, or by the sheer force of tradition; others mere brawlers, who, by dint of repeating year after year the same set of stereotyped declamations against the government of the day, have sneaked into the reputation of revolutionists of the first water They are an unavoidable evil: with time they are shaken off."
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"The history of humanity is not a hotel where someone can rent a room whenever it suits him; nor is it a vehicle which we board or get out of at random. Our past will be for us a burden beneath which we can only collapse for as long as we refuse to understand the present and fight for a better future. Only then — but from that moment on — will the burden become a blessing, that is, a weapon in the battle for freedom."
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