"Do we always grind through the present, doomed to throw a gold haze of fond retrospect over the past?"
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Past quotes
Past
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Past quotes (page 97 of 526)
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"And if you have no past or future which, after all, is all that the present is made of, why then you may as well dispose of the empty shell of present and commit suicide."
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"A handy short definition of almost all science fiction might read: realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the nature and significance of the scientific method."
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"Man, even man debased by the neocapitalism and pseudosocialism of our time, is a marvelous being because he sometimes speaks. Language is the mark, the sign, not of his fall but of his original innocence. Through the Word we may regain the lost kingdom and recover powers we possessed in the far-distant past."
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"There are vistas never dreamed of, there are joys never even known, there are glories no past glory ever surpassed. These wait for you but only if you accept my legacy and help bring these things about."
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"I love my friends and my past, and it's made me who I am."
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"The natural way of ensuring that the past continues to live in the present and to inform the future is to write it down."
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"The past is but the past of a beginning."
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"Sometimes I do it more literally, sometimes I do a little softer [interpretation], but I'm just inspired by the past."
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"The present is what slips by us while we're pondering the past and worrying about the future."
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"Imagination judges the future by the past, but concerns itself with the future more than with the past."
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"Banks have never made money in the history of banking, losing the equivalent of all their past profits periodically - while bankers strike it rich."
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"Legitimacy, when challenged, bases itself on an appeal to the past, while justification relates to an end that lies in the future. Violence can be justifiable, but it never will be legitimate."
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"The cultural treasures of the past, believed to be dead, are being made to speak, in the course of which it turns out that they propose things altogether different than what had been thought."
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"Kierkegaard, Marx, and Nietzsche are for us like guideposts to a past which has lost its significance."
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"Culture is being threatened when all worldly objects and things, produced by the present or the past, are treated as mere functions for the life process of society, as though they are there only to fulfill some need, and for this functionalization it is almost irrelevant whether the needs in question are of a high or a low order."
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"If a given science accidentally reached its goal, this would by no means stop the workers in the field, who would be driven past their goal by the sheer momentum of the illusion of unlimited progress."
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"The individual who has been liberated by reason is always running head-on into a world, a society, whose past in the shape of 'prejudices' has a great deal of power; he is forced to learn that past reality is also a reality."
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"The good of other times let people state; I think it lucky I was born so late."
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"We praise times past, while we times present use; Yet due the worship which to each we give."
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