Past Quotes - Page 13

• To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind.

  Edmund Burke

  Age, Complaining, Common

  'Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents' (1770) p. 4

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think Santa Claus is, by and large, quite beneficial, for when the child is finally allowed -- or forced -- to recognize the nonexistence of Santa Claus, then the child is able to go through the vital intellectual process of reconstructing reality in light of new evidence, complete with back-forming new stories to account for past events. This prepares the child for many other disillusionments and gives her vital and well-supported experience in maintaining her grip on reality independent of the stories told to her at any given time.

  Orson Scott Card

  Children, Independent, Reality

  7 Copy quote

• A European who goes to New York and Chicago sees the future... when he goes to Asia he sees the past.

  Bertrand Russell

  New York, Chicago, Asia

  Bertrand Russell (1992). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903-1959”, p.555, Psychology Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• London has changed enormously and so have the English in the past decade. They're more like Americans and more like Europeans, too. They're always eating out, and when they're at home they don't cook the way they did ten years ago. They're all sitting around in cafés, like the Continentals, drinking coffee and chattering and watching the world go by.

  Doris Lessing

  Drinking, Coffee, Home

  Interview with Jonah Raskin, progressive.org. November 19, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In times of war, as everyone knows, who has lived through one, or talked to soldiers when they are allowing themselves to remember the truth, and not the sentimentalities with which we all shield ourselves from the horrors of which we are capable ... in times of war we revert, as a species, to the past, and are permitted to be brutal and cruel. It is for this reason, and of course others, that a great many people enjoy war. But this is one of the facts about war that is not often talked about.

  Doris Lessing

  War, People, Soldier

  6 Copy quote

• It's past parsons to console us: No, nor no doctor fetch for me: I can die without my bolus; Two of a trade, lass, never agree! Parson and Doctor!--don't they love rarely Fighting the devil in other men's fields! Stand up yourself and match him fairly: Then see how the rascal yields!

  George Meredith

  Fighting, Men, Two

  George Meredith (1862). “Modern Love and Poems of the English Roadside: With Poems and Ballads”, p.89

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I can't get past the fact that food is coming out of my wife's breasts. What was once essentially an entertainment center has now become a juice bar.

  Paul Reiser

  Wife, Bars, Juice

  4 Copy quote

• I like to define biology as the history of the earth and all its life - past, present, and future. To understand biology is to understand that all life is linked to the earth from which it came; it is to understand that the stream of life, flowing out of the dim past into the uncertain future, is in reality a unified force, though composed of an infinite number and variety of separate lives.

  Rachel Carson

  Reality, Numbers, Earth

  Preface to "Humane Biology Projects" by the Animal Welfare Institute, 1961.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Ballet is the repetitive training of the body for the purpose of executing steps in traditional fashion. It is tied to and bound by the past. It is a disciplined beauty consciously preserved in the image of the old days in societies that were class-conscious and appreciative of elitist physical expertise.

  Shirley MacLaine

  Fashion, Class, Ballet

  5 Copy quote

• It might be plausibly maintained, that in almost every one of the leading controversies, past or present, in social philosophy, both sides were in the right in what they affirmed, though wrong in what they denied.

  John Stuart Mill

  Philosophy, Might, Sides

  John Stuart Mill (1864). “Dissertations and Discussions: Political, Philosophical, and Historical”, p.11

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• And I often dream of chemistry at night, dreams that conflate the past and the present, the grid of the periodic table transformed to the grid of Manhattan. Sometimes, too, I dream of the indecipherable language of tin (a confused memory, perhaps, of its plaintive "cry"). But my favorite dream is of going to the opera (I am Hafnium), sharing a box at the Met with the other heavy transition metals my old and valued friends Tantalum, Rhenium, Osmium, Iridium, Platinum, Gold, and Tungsten.

  Oliver Sacks

  Dream, Memories, Confused

  "Uncle Tungsten". Book by Oliver Sacks, 2001.

  66 Copy quote

  Show source

• Power is better than revenge. Power is a live thing, by which you reach out to grasp the future. Revenge is a dead thing, reaching out from the past to grasp you.

  Lois McMaster Bujold

  Revenge, Reaching, Reach Out

  Lois McMaster Bujold (2002). “Miles Errant”, p.25, Baen Books

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• When seen in retrospect, fashions seem to express their era. Although it is more difficult to draw conclusions from contemporary clothes, the same principles which hold for the clothes of the past must hold for clothes of the present and the future.

  James Laver

  Fashion, Clothes, Principles

  11 Copy quote

• Fashion postulates an achrony, a time which does not exist; here the past is shameful and the present is constantly "eaten up" by the Fashion being heralded.

  Roland Barthes

  Fashion, Doe, Shameful

  Roland Barthes (1983). “Systeme de la Mode”, p.128, Univ of California Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every new Fashion is a refusal to inherit, a subversion against the oppression of the preceding Fashion; Fashion experiences itself as a Right, the natural right of the present over the past.

  Roland Barthes

  Fashion, Oppression, Natural

  Roland Barthes (1983). “Systeme de la Mode”, p.112, Univ of California Press

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Southern past, the Southern present, the Southern future, concentrated into Gertrude's voice, became one of red clay pine-barrens, of chain-gang camps, of housewives dressed in flour sacks who stare all day dully down into dirty sinks.

  Randall Jarrell

  Dirty, Voice, Southern

  Randall Jarrell (2010). “Pictures from an Institution: A Comedy”, p.66, University of Chicago Press

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• All the political parties alike have their origins in past ideas and not in new ideas and none more conspicuously so than the Marxists .

  John Maynard Keynes

  Party, Ideas, Political

  John Maynard Keynes, Royal Economic Society (Great Britain) (1971). “The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes: Essays in biography”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• When asked by a grumpily puzzled professor what "rules" he followed, Debussy is said to have retorted, mon plaisir "whatever I please" and he further claimed that more was to be gained by watching the sun rise than by listening to the Pastoral Symphony. Although such remarks were intended to shock, they contain a core of Debussyan verity.

  Claude Debussy

  Symphony, Listening, Sun

  56 Copy quote

• Christianity has held back any further advances in human consciousness for the past thousand years. And for the past century it's been in direct conflict with its illegitimate offspring, Communism (again with a capital C). Both ask the individual to sacrifice his self-interest to the higher goals of the organization. (Which is okay by me as long as it's voluntary; but as soon as either becomes too big - and takes on that damned capital C - they stop asking for cooperation and start demanding it.)
  Any higher states of human enlightenment have been sacrificed between these two monoliths.

  David Gerrold

  Sacrifice, Self, Years

  "The Man Who Folded Himself". Book by David Gerrold, 1973.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• As the mental endowment of a man varies with the organisation of his accumulated experiences, the better endowed he is, the more readily will he be able to remember his whole past, everything that he has ever thought or heard, seen or done, perceived or felt, the more completely in fact will he be able to reproduce his whole life. Universal remembrance of all its experiences, therefore, is the surest, most general, and most easily proved mark of a genius.

  Otto Weininger

  Men, Remembrance, Genius

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.114, Рипол Классик

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is an excellent way to make predictions without the slightest risk of error: predict the past.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Errors

  7 Copy quote

• Our most merciless enemy is our past.

  Maxim Gorky

  Enemy, Our Past

  50 Copy quote

• There is, however, no advantage in reflections on the past further than may be of service to the present. For the future we must provide by maintaining what the present gives us and redoubling our efforts; it is hereditary to us to win virtue as the fruit of labour, and you must not change the habit, even though you should have a slight advantage in wealth and resources; for it is not right that what was won in want should be lost in plenty.

  Thucydides

  Reflection, Winning, Should Have

  Thucydides, T. E. Wick (1982). “The Peloponnesian War”, McGraw-Hill Companies

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The time for reasoning is past; now's the time to get steamed up and fight like mad.

  Jean Genet

  Fighting, Mad, Reasoning

  Jean Genet (1960). “The Balcony: (Le Balcon) a Play in Nine Scenes”

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Science is the observation of things possible, whether present or past; prescience is the knowledge of things which may come to pass, though but slowly.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  May, Observation

  Leonardo Da Vinci, General Press (2016). “The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci”, p.440, GENERAL PRESS

  4 Copy quote

  Show source