Past Quotations | Page 2

I don't mind doing two or three Eagles songs and playing the drums. I'm not one of those artists who's going to sit here and deny the past.

We live trapped, between the churned-up and examined past and a future that waits for our work.

Personally, I am stuck with one foot in the past and one foot in the present.

The future hasn't happened yet and the past is gone. So I think the only moment we have is right here and now, and I try to make the best of those moments, the moments that I'm in.

I have turned away from the thought of writing fiction in the past through what I suppose is, actually, fear. The direct, raw invitation for the reader to come in and explore my imagination is fairly scary for me so I have busied myself with so much else.

The very purpose of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution is to protect minority rights against majority voters. Every court decision that strikes down discriminatory legislation, including past Supreme Court decisions, affirming the fundamental rights to marry the person you love, overrules a majority decision.

My past is my wisdom to use today... my future is my wisdom yet to experience. Be in the present because that is where life resides.

Isn't it amazing the way the future succeeds in creating an appropriate past?

The ultimate function of prophecy is not to tell the future, but to make it. Your successful past will block your visions of the future.

I realize at one point, that I was being followed, and then I began to see the surveillance that was going past the road on my house. And so, these cars began to surveil me. People began to follow me around, and it did, it was very disrupting to think that your privacy was being violated, and for no reason that I could come up with.

The place where I think social media fails is in showing the knowledge, the tradition of stitching the clothing, of cutting the fabric, of the tannery, of the skinning of the jewels - this knowledge needs respect. Online and social media is the future, but we need to learn from the past, too.

In the past I have defended the right of the IRA to engage in armed struggle. I did so because there was no alternative for those who would not bend the knee, or turn a blind eye to oppression, or for those who wanted a national republic.

One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.

Vinyl is the real deal. I've always felt like, until you buy the vinyl record, you don't really own the album. And it's not just me or a little pet thing or some kind of retro romantic thing from the past. It is still alive.

Past success is no guarantee of future success, so I have learned to be an entrepreneur. I began to produce and direct my own projects.

We must work to stabilize Social Security. We must not gamble with our nation's social insurance program, one of our most popular and effective federal programs that has remained dependable and stable for the past 70 years.

There is an opportunity for us to renew ourselves. There's an opportunity for us to leave the past behind and present something different for the future.

There will always be men struggling to change, and there will always be those who are controlled by the past.

We must respect the past, and mistrust the present, if we wish to provide for the safety of the future.

In old age we are like a batch of letters that someone has sent. We are no longer in the past, we have arrived.

Loved. You can't use it in the past tense. Death does not stop that love at all.

This enemy of peace in the world today is unlike any we have seen in the past, and our military is learning from, and building on, previous successes while carrying peace and freedom into the future.

You have reckoned that history ought to judge the past and to instruct the contemporary world as to the future. The present attempt does not yield to that high office. It will merely tell how it really was.

For the past few years, I've been more selective than I have any right to be, but I think that's finally starting to work in my favor. I think I get way too much credit for making what people consider to be smart choices, but it's only because I made a decision to stop worrying about making money.

Next month, I will celebrate my 30th anniversary of marriage with my beautiful bride, Vicki. Our marriage has been a blessing. I have gained even more respect for the institution over the past 3 decades and will defend it against attack.

The science of politics is the one science that is deposited by the streams of history, like the grains of gold in the sand of a river; and the knowledge of the past, the record of truths revealed by experience, is eminently practical, as an instrument of action and a power that goes to making the future.

Adolescence represents an inner emotional upheaval, a struggle between the eternal human wish to cling to the past and the equally powerful wish to get on with the future.

Our educational system is like an automobile which has strong rear lights, brightly illuminating the past. But looking forward things are barely discernible.

I'm growing old, I delight in the past.

We could imagine nothing pleasanter than to spend all of our lives digging for relics of the past.

An author who sets about to depict events of the past that have run their course is suspected of wishing to avoid the problems of the present day, of being, in other words, a reactionary.

Architecture is exposed to life. If its body is sensitive enough, it can assume a quality that bears witness to past life.

For too long, decisions have been taken behind closed doors - tablets of stone have simply been past down to people without bothering to involve people, listen to their views or give them information about what we are doing and why.

I have a hard time getting past the day without the nap, so the nap is a must.

And I have been campaigning for the past three months trying to get the Senate Judiciary Committee that has the oversight authority and responsibility to start its own public hearings.

The same undisciplined government spending and social engineering that has undermined our economy over the past 30 years has also been tearing at the social fabric of this land.

Humans are the only creatures with the ability to dive deep in the sea, fly high in the sky, send instant messages around the globe, reflect on the past, assess the present and imagine the future.

If the only new thing we have to offer is an improved version of the past, then today can only be inferior to yesterday. Hypnotized by images of the past, we risk losing all capacity for creative change.

After voluntary exertions on the part of our people to which the history of the world furnishes no parallel, is the old root of bitterness still to remain in the ground, to sprout and bear fruit in the future as it has borne fruit in the past?

I think history is continuous. It doesn't begin or end on Pearl Harbor Day or the day Lyndon Johnson withdraws from the presidency or on 9/11. You have to learn from the past but not be imprisoned by it. You need to take counsel of history but never be imprisoned by it.

I shall take all the troubles of the past, all the disappointments, all the headaches, and I shall pack them in a bag and throw them in the East River.

Everyone sort of sees his own life and times as being ephemeral. One thinks that everything good or important that happened, happened in the past. But I think that seeing scenes that you are used to, but with the heightening effects of poetry, perhaps makes you value your life and times more than you might otherwise do.

Cheyenne Autumn was received not too successfully. I still think it was a very good movie. It was kinda Ford's apology for the way he had treated Indians in his past pictures.

Our greatest responsibility is not to be pencils of the past.

Create your future from your future, not your past.

The ability to think straight, some knowledge of the past, some vision of the future, some urge to fit that service into the well-being of the community - these are the most vital things that education must try to produce.

Our policy is not to discourage the private sector, but to see that Air India plays the role of flagship in the industry. In the transport sector, Air India is the 'fate of India' and all efforts will be made to restore its past glory.

I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past. We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future.

Unlike some, I don't claim to hold the mystic key to the future. But judging from past events, it seems to me that those who want to prophesy the imminent end of America's unique global role have a harder case to make than those who think we will limp on for a while, making a mess of things as usual.

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

Time is a great conference planning our end, and youth is only the past putting a leg forward.

You can do the best research and be making the strongest intellectual argument, but if readers don't get past the third paragraph you've wasted your energy and valuable ink.

Only fools live in the past or carry envy to the present.

Before we move forward with new efforts to lower the barriers to international free trade, we must review the consequences of the policies of the past and address the problems of the present.

I'm not trying to be evasive, but when I say yes and no, I say 'yes' because there are narrow-minded people that won't look past the logo and 'no' because 'American Idol' put me in front of millions of people and I would not have a career without 'Idol.

The dark shadow we seem to see in the distance is not really a mountain ahead, but the shadow of the mountain behind - a shadow from the past thrown forward into our future. It is a dark sludge of historical sectarianism. We can leave it behind us if we wish.

Criticizing Fox News has nothing to do with criticizing the press. Fox News is not a news organization. It is the de facto leader of the GOP, and it is long past time that it is treated as such by the media, elected officials and the public.

I think sometimes that people think brave means not being afraid, which of course it doesn't mean that at all. It means that you're afraid, but you move past that and do it anyway, do what you think is right.

Arizona was the best place. I like the competition in baseball, and the football program has been great for the past five years. I think I'll be playing as a freshman in both sports, and I think I can play with them.

Don't ignore the past, but deal with it, on your own pace. Once you deal with it, you are free of it; and you are free to embrace your life and be a happy loving person because if you don't, the past will come back to haunt and keep coming back to haunt you.

It is even better to act quickly and err than to hesitate until the time of action is past.

Finding oil is a multidisciplinary science. You need a lot of people - statisticians, engineers, and geologists, of course. And what I have learned in the past 30 years is that I read people better than I read books.

I don't have time to beat myself up over my fallible nature. Instead I use my energy to learn from my past and let it inform my future. It's time to own all of our glory, mistakes, mess and light and be gentle to ourselves. Let's be kind to our spirits and celebrate the truth of our hearts.

A feeling for history is almost an essential for writing and appreciating good science fiction, for sensing the connections between the past and future that run through our present.

The particular aspect of time that I'm interested in is the arrow of time: the fact that the past is different from the future. We remember the past but we don't remember the future. There are irreversible processes. There are things that happen, like you turn an egg into an omelet, but you can't turn an omelet into an egg.

I've spent a great deal of time over the past decade as a caregiver for various family members. It gives me a perspective on the struggles that many New Yorkers face with illness, disability, health care, insurance difficulties, and trying to work with and also take care of family members.

I grew up in Queens, and on Sunday evenings, my parents would drive my brother and me past the factory. We could smell the week's supply of bread baking. I always connected the 59th Street Bridge with that scent. Who woulda thunk, years later, I'd be there, directing and producing a hit TV show?

Anyone who doesn't miss the past never had a mother.

Winners live in the present tense. People who come up short are consumed with future or past. I want to be living in the now.

Prayer doesn't work because someone out there is listening, it works because someone in here is listening. I've paid attention. I've pictured what I want to happen in my life. I've meditated extensively on my family, my future, my past actions and what did and didn't work for me about them.

Education in the past has been too much inspiration and too little information.

What grieves me most in my past offenses, O my loving God, is not so much the punishment I have deserved, as the displeasure I have given You, Who are worthy of infinite love.

Biographers use historians more than historians use biographers, although there can be two-way traffic - e.g., the ever-growing production of biographies of women is helping to change the general picture of the past presented by historians.

I just love mermaids. I was a mermaid in my past life. I just feel it when I go in the sea. I just feel a connection there between me, and the water, and the fish - they speak to me - and the shells - they ring out to me.

The day when the scientist, no matter how devoted, may make significant progress alone and without material help is past. This fact is most self-evident in our work. Instead of an attic with a few test tubes, bits of wire and odds and ends, the attack on the atomic nucleus has required the development and construction of great instruments on an engineering scale.

The man in gray decided to take the Glen Suite of diamonds at midnight. Provided they were still in the apartment safe and the occupants away. This he needed to know. So he watched and he waited. At half past seven he was rewarded.

I am always a beginner. I only try to include different parts of life; the pastoral, the tragic, et cetera.

One of the tragedies of modern times is that people have come to believe that something said by someone in the past, perhaps for illustrative or provocation purposes, actually represents that person's beliefs at the time.

The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.

I was lucky, I had support from Mum and Dad - they said as long as you work hard, anything is possible. I never thought past those two things - that I liked living in imaginary worlds and that it is possible to do that for a living.

A city whose living immediacy is so urgent that when I am in it I lose all sense of the past.

In the past a leader was a boss. Today's leaders must be partners with their people... they no longer can lead solely based on positional power.

I learned to put 100 percent into what you're doing. I learned about setting goals for yourself, knowing where you want to be and taking small steps toward those goals. I learned about adversity and how to get past it.

Internationally, President Obama has adopted an appeasement strategy. He believes America's role as leader in the world is a thing of the past. I believe a strong America must - and will - lead the future.

I don't live in the past. I just live in the enjoyment of the game.

Few great men would have got past personnel.

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.

I can't change the past, but one person can change the future - anything can happen.

I have no doubt I was someone very interesting in a past life.

No heirloom of humankind captures the past as do art and language.

I am 26 and, and I don't recover as fast as I have in the past.

By in large in this country the issue of gay rights and equality should be past the point of debate. Really, there should be no debate anymore.

Everywhere across whatever sorrows of which our life is woven, some radiant joy will gaily flash past.

As an architect you design for the present, with an awareness of the past, for a future which is essentially unknown.

We can easily manage if we will only take, each day, the burden appointed to it. But the load will be too heavy for us if we carry yesterday's burden over again today, and then add the burden of the morrow before we are required to bear it.

I think there's nothing sadder than a pro athlete who plays past his prime.

Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it.

Do not brood over your past mistakes and failures as this will only fill your mind with grief, regret and depression. Do not repeat them in the future.

The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody's guess.

Forget the past - the future will give you plenty to worry about.