Past Quotes

To rectify past blunders is impossible, but we might profit by the experience of them.

We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience.

The adherence to conservative principles in the finances of the Government, in the relationship of the Government to the individual, to the State and to the locality... do demand different actions on the part of Government than were so in the past. Now that is what I am trying to do, and I will keep trying.

I don't carry the burden of the past or the madness of the future. I live in the present.

Amid the vastness of the things among which we live, the existence of nothingness holds the first place; its function extends over all things that have no existence, and its essence, as regards time, lies precisely between the past and the future, and has nothing in the present.

Knowledge of the past and of the places of the earth is the ornament and food of the mind of man.

The stupid speak of the past, the wise of the present, and fools of the future.

What are we? What is the future? What is the past? What magic fluid envelops us and hides from us the things it is most important for us to know? We are born, we live, and we die in the midst of the marvelous.

There are two systems, the past and the future. The present is only a painful transition. Which must triumph? The future, will it not? Yes indeed, the future! That is, intelligence, industry, and peace. The past was brute force, privilege, and ignorance. Each of our victories was a triumph for the ideas of the Revolution. Victories will be won, one of these days, without cannon, and without bayonets.

Don't forget what I discovered that over ninety percent of all national deficits from 1921 to 1939 were caused by payments for past, present, and future wars.

Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples.

If in other lands the eternal truths of the past are threatened by intolerance we must provide a safe place for their perpetuation.

To bring together the records of the past and to house them in buildings where they will be preserved for the use of men and women in the future, a Nation must believe in three things. It must believe in the past. It must believe in the future. It must, above all, believe in the capacity of its own people so to learn from the past that they can gain in judgment in creating their own future.

We place our vision of a new constitutional order for South Africa on the table not as conquerors, prescribing to the conquered. We speak as fellow citizens to heal the wounds of the past with the intent of constructing a new order based on justice for all. This is the challenge that faces all South Africans today, and it is one to which I am certain we will all rise.

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.

I could not imagine that the future I was walking toward could compare in any way to the past that I was leaving behind.

Reconciliation means working together to correct the legacy of past injustice.

Let us never be unmindful of the terrible past from which we come.

The message of reconciliation, of nation-building, of granting amnesty, indemnity, has struck a powerful, favorable chord. And people can understand that we're here not for purposes of retribution but to forget the past and to build our country.

We don't have to be victims of our past, that we can let go of our bitterness, and that all of us can achieve greatness.