[W]e must never allow the future to collapse under the burden of memory.

Einmal ist keinmal. What happens but once might as well not have happened at all. The history of the Czechs will not be repeated, nor will the history of Europe. The history of the Czechs and of Europe is a pair of sketches from the pen of mankind's fateful inexperience, unbearably light, light as a feather, as dust swirling into the air, as whatever will no longer exist tomorrow.

Et là est l'horreur: le passé dont on se souvient est dépourvu de temps. Impossible de revivre un amour comme on relit un livre ou comme on revoit un film.

They shout that they want to shape a better future, but it's not true. The future is only an indifferent void no one cares about,but the past is filled with life, and its countenance is irritating, repellent, wounding, to the point that we want to destroy it or repaint it. We want to be the masters of the future only for the power to change the past. We fight for access to the labs where we can retouch photos and rewrite biographies and history.

They were ready to sell people a future in exchange for their past... They wanted to compel him to cast his life away and become a shadow, a man without past, an actor without a role, and turn even his castaway life, even the role the actor had abandoned, into a shadow. Having turned him into a shadow, they would let him live.

L'avenir n'est qu'un vide indifférent qui n'intéresse personne, mais le passé est plein de vie et son visage irrite, révolte, blesse, au point que nous voulons le détruire et le repeindre.

The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.