Past Quotes - Page 21

• We might realize that the present moment may be one of an eternal or sempiternal series of moments, all of which will resemble it because, in some ways, they are the present, and won't in other ways, because the present will be the past by that time.

  John Ashbery

  May, Might, Way

  6 Copy quote

• If we have learned anything in the past ten years, it is that these lovely things about America were never lovely. We have been expansionist and aggressive and mean to other people from the beginning. And we've been aggressive and mean to people in this country, and we've allocated the wealth of this country in a very unjust way. We've never had justice in our courts for the poor people, for black people, for radicals. Now how can we boast that America is a very special place? It's not that special. It really isn't.

  Howard Zinn

  Country, Mean, Years

  "The Problem is Civil Obedience". www.thirdworldtraveler.com. 1970.

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is the past and its continuing horrors: violence, war, prejudices against those who are different, outrageous monopolization of the good earth's wealth by a few, political power in the hands of liars and murderers, the building of prisons instead of schools, the poisoning of the press and the entire culture by money. It is easy to become discouraged observing this, especially since this is what the press and television insist that we look at, and nothing more.

  Howard Zinn

  War, Liars, School

  Howard Zinn (2015). “A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present”, p.687, Routledge

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• The school was nothing but reminiscence - of an Italian hill town, a French abbey, an English academy, the different sources improbably but convincingly melded into a fantasy about the classic sites of Europe as imagined by exiles from cold peripheral lands, nostalgia about somebody else's past.

  Edmund White

  School, Italian, Europe

  Edmund White (2016). “A Boy's Own Story: Picador Classic”, p.102, Pan Macmillan

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• How thrilling to discover one had depths, how consoling to find them less polluted than the shallows, how encouraging to identify the enemy not as a fissure in the will but as a dead fetus in the specimen jar of the unconscious. My attention was being paternally led away from the excruciating present to the happy, healthy future that would be enabled by an analysis of the sick past, as though the priest had nothing to do but study old books and make bright forecasts, the present not worthy of notice.

  Edmund White

  Book, Sick, Healthy

  "A Boy's Own Story". Book by Edmund White, 1982.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The internationalization of art becomes a factor contributing to the estrangement of art from the artist. The sum of works of all times and places stands against him as an entity with objectives and values of its own. In turn, since becoming aware of the organized body of artworks as the obstacle to his own aesthetic self-affirmation, the artist is pushed toward anti-intellectualism and willful dismissal of the art of the past.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Art, Self, Body

  Harold Rosenberg (1983). “Art on the Edge: Creators and Situations”, p.137, University of Chicago Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If being an anti-art artist is difficult, being an anti-art art historian is a hard position indeed. His doctrinal revolutionism brings forth nothing new in art but reenacts upheavals on the symbolic plane of language. It provides the consoling belief that overthrows are occurring as in the past, that barriers to creation are being surmounted, and that art is pursuing a radical purpose, even if it is only the purpose of doing away with itself.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Art, Purpose, Upheaval

  "Art on the Edge". Book by Harold Rosenberg. Chapter: "What's New: Ritual Revolution", p. 260, 1975.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Marriage is the lightning rod that absorbs anxiety and stress from all other sources, past and present. When marriage has a firm foundation of solid friendship and mutual respect, it can tolerate a fair amount of raw emotion. A good fight can clear the air, and it's nice to know we can survive conflict and even learn from it. Many couples, however, get trapped in endless rounds of fighting and blaming that they don't know how to get out of. When fights go unchecked and unrepaired, they can eventually erode love and respect, which are the bedrock of any successful relationship.

  Harriet Lerner

  Couple, Nice, Stress

  FaceBook post by Harriet Lerner from Nov 14, 2013

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• The task of the mind is to produce future, as the poet Paul Valery once put it. A mind is fundamentally an anticipator, an expectation-generator. It mines the present for clues, which it refines with the help of the materials it has saved from the past, turning them into anticipations of the future. And then it acts, rationally, on the basis of those hard-won anticipations.

  Daniel Dennett

  Expectations, Mind, Tasks

  "Kinds Of Minds: Toward An Understanding Of Consciousness (Science Masters Series)". Book by Daniel Dennett, June 27, 1996.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Order is the law of nature, the universal trend, the cosmic direction. If time is an arrow, that arrow points toward order. The future is pattern, organization, union, intensification; the past, randomness, confusion, disintegration, dissipation.

  Alan Lightman

  Order, Law, Organization

  Alan Lightman (2011). “Einstein's Dreams”, p.44, Vintage

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• If history moves forward, knowledge of it travels backwards, so that in writing of our own recent past we are continually meeting ourselves coming the other way.

  Terry Eagleton

  Moving, Writing, Way

  Terry Eagleton (2008). “Literary Theory: An Introduction”, p.190, U of Minnesota Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The present is only understandable through the past, with which it forms a living continuity; and the past is always grasped from our own partial viewpoint within the present.

  Terry Eagleton

  Viewpoints, Form, Continuity

  Terry Eagleton (2011). “Literary Theory: An Introduction”, p.62, John Wiley & Sons

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The truth is that the past exists no more than the future, even though it feels as though it does.

  Terry Eagleton

  Doe, Truth Is, Feels

  "Why Marx Was Right". Book by Terry Eagleton, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In its relation to the reality of daily life, the high culture of the past was many things opposition and adornment, outcry and resignation. But it was also the appearance of the realm of freedom: the refusal to behave.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Reality, Culture, Daily Life

  Herbert Marcuse (2013). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.75, Routledge

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• As I looked more carefully at the listening matrix I saw that during the past twenty years we had taken a magnifying glass to the first of these four quadrants, the female experience of powerlessness. I saw I was subconsciously making a false assumption: The more deeply I understood women's experience of powerlessness, the more I assumed men had the power women did not have. In fact, what I was understanding was the female experience of male power.

  Warren Farrell

  Taken, Men, Glasses

  "Why Men Are the Way They Are". Book by Warren Farrell, 1986.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the past we believed both sexes were born with original sin. Today, we have come to unconsciously believe in the original sin of boys, but the original innocence of girls.

  Warren Farrell

  Girl, Sex, Believe

  "Father and Child Reunion". Book by Warren Farrell, 2001.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In a sense, sexual harassment lawsuits are just the latest version of the female selection process allowing her to select for men who care enough for her to put their career at risk; who have enough finesse to initiate without becoming a jerk and enough guts to initiate despite a potential lawsuit. In the past, though, the process of his overcoming her barriers was called 'courtship.' Now it is called either 'courtship' or 'sexual harassment'.

  Warren Farrell

  Men, Careers, Risk

  "The Myth of Male Power". Book by Warren Farrell, 1993.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our focus on discrimination against women during the past 30 years has blinded us to opportunities for women.

  Warren Farrell

  Opportunity, Years, Focus

  Warren Farrell (2005). “Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap--and what Women Can Do about it”, p.24, AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• You should never fall in love with your own press clippings, because it is very much the nature of the beast that the same journalists who build you up between Monday and Friday tear you down for weekend fun...My family's habit of living in the past seems to me pathological, even dangerous. If all greatness lies in the past, what is the point of the future?

  Stephen L. Carter

  Friday, Falling In Love, Monday

  "The Emperor of Ocean Park". Book by Stephen L. Carter, 2002.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• We ought to know about our culinary past. Food and identity is terribly important ... I don't mean we should go out and eat historic dishes, but we should know what makes us different ... self-confident nations have that sense of where they come from.

  Tom Jaine

  Mean, Self, Important

  4 Copy quote

• I'm intensely private, and I've openly shown annoyance at the paparazzi. That's served in the past to create an image of me where I'm always frowning or looking angry.

  Demi Moore

  Frowning, Annoyance, Paparazzi

  "Glamour Interview: Jennifer Aniston, Demi Moore and Alicia Keys Talk!". Interview with Kaitlin Menza, www.glamour.com. August 29, 2011.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Your desire or beliefs will literally be reaching back into time, teaching the nerves new tricks. Definite reorganizations in that past will occur in your present, allowing you to behave in entirely new fashions. Learned behavior therefore alters not only present and future but also past conduct.

  Jane Roberts

  Fashion, Teaching, Desire

  Jane Roberts (2011). “The Nature of Personal Reality (A Seth Book): Specific, Practical Techniques for Solving Everyday Problems and Enriching the Life You Know”, p.359, Amber-Allen Publishing

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• The middle years, caught between children and parents, free of neither: the past stretches back too densely, it is too thickly populated, the future has not yet thinned out.

  Margaret Drabble

  Children, Years, Parent

  Margaret Drabble (2013). “The Middle Ground”, p.81, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our assent to the hypothesis implies that it is held to be true of all particular instances. That these cases belong to past or to future times, that they have or have not already occurred, makes no difference in the applicability of the rule to them. Because the rule prevails, it includes all cases.

  William Whewell

  Differences, Cases, Hypothesis

  William Whewell (1968). “Theory of Scientific Method”, p.151, Hackett Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the past, when I shot films about fishermen and hunters, I always had to admire their ability to perceive time in its entirety. The present was always temporary.

  Lennart Meri

  Hunters, Film, Fisherman

  7 Copy quote