4,591 Quotes About Past

True reconciliation does not consist in merely forgetting the past.

A new society cannot be created by reproducing the repugnant past, however refined or enticingly repackaged.

The past is a rich resource on which we can draw in order to make decisions for the future, but it does not dictate our choices. We should look back at the past and select what is good, and leave behind what is bad.

If you're using your imagination, you tend to look into the past for ideas.

Sometimes a person has to go back, really back-to have a sense, an understanding of all that's gone to make them-before they can go forward.

To marry was to say you believed in the future and in the past, too-that history and tradition and hope could stay knit together to hold you up.

Zen is really just a reminder to stay alive and to be awake. We tend to daydream all the time, speculating about the future and dwelling on the past. Zen practice is about appreciating your life in this moment. If you are truly aware of five minutes a day, then you are doing pretty well. We are beset by both the future and the past, and there is no reality apart from the here and now.

Simultaneous discovery is utterly commonplace, and it was only the rarity of scientists, not the inherent improbability of the phenomenon, that made it remarkable in the past. Scientists on the same road may be expected to arrive at the same destination, often not far apart.

Gossip isn't scandal and it's not merely malicious. It's chatter about the human race by lovers of the same. Gossip is the tool of the poet, the shop-talk of the scientist, and the consolation of the housewife, wit, tycoon and intellectual. It begins in the nursery and ends when speech is past.