Past, Present and Future Quotes
Top 40 Past, Present and Future Quotes
No 1 (Best quote!)
You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by avoiding it today.
- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American president,
pictured right.
No 2
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
- Peter Drucker (1909-2005), pictured right, American
management writer.
No 3
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
- George Santayana (1863–1952), Spanish philosopher, pictured right.
Edmund Burke (1729-97), pictured
right, Irish-born British Member of Parliament, says similarly:
Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it
But the American writer and poet, Maya Angelou (1928-2014), pictured right, is more
optimsitic:
History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but, if faced with courage, need not be lived again.
No 4
Creating the future doesn't require a company to abandon all of its past.
- Gary Hamel, pictured right above, and
C.K. Prahalad, pictured right below,
in Competing for the
Future (1994)
No 5
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate for the stormy present and future,
- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American president,
pictured right.
Lincoln also comments:
People who stay in the present will remain in the
past.
No 6
Tomorrow is another day!,
(last line of Gone With The Wind, the 1939 film and Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel)
- Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh, pictured right, in the film).
No 7
Memories mean more to me than dresses.
- Anne Frank (1929-1945), child victim of the
Holocaust, pictured right.
No 8
Neither a wise man, nor a brave man, lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to
run over him.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969,)
American Second World War leader and president, pictured right.
No 9
Change is the process by which the future invades our lives.
- Alvin Toffler, pictured right, in Future Shock (1970)
No 10
Study the past if you would divine the future.
- Confucius (551- 479 BC), Chinese
philosopher, pictured right.
The American revolutionary, Patrick
Henry (1736-99), pictured right, agrees:
I know of no way of judging of the future, but by the past
But Edmund Burke (1729-97), pictured
right, Irish-born British philosopher and politician, disagrees:
You can never plan the future by the past
No 11
We can only have one future, and it will be made of our dreams, if we have the courage to challenge
convention.
- Soichiro Honda (1906-91), co-founder of Honda,
pictured right.
No 12
You cannot fight against the future.
- William Gladstone (1809–98), British Prime
Minister, pictured right.
No 13
If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future.
- Winston Churchill (1874–19650, British prime
minister, pictured right.
No 14
History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition.,
- Henry Ford (1863–1947), American car manufacturer,
pictured right.
No 15
Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past ,
(Party slogan from the 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four)
- George Orwell (1903-50), English writer, pictured right
No 16
I will live in the Past, the Present and the Future...I will not shut out the lessons that they teach,
(Scrooge in the 1843 novel A Christmas Carol)
- Charles Dickens (1812-70), pictured
right, English writer.
No 17
Be not false about the past.
- Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) Italian
painter, sculptor, architect and engineer, pictured right.
No 18
I do not know which makes a man more conservative – to know nothing but the
present, or nothing but the past.
- John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946),
English economist, pictured right.
No 19
We are all prisoners of our past.
- Charles Handy, pictured right, The Age of Unreason (1989).
No 20
Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, and I'm going to be happy in it.
- Groucho Marx (1890-1977), American comedian and film and TV star, pictured right.
No 21
Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.
(Elizabeth in the 1813 novel Pride and
Prejudice)
- Jane Austen (1775-1817), English writer,
pictured right.
No 22
Fantasizing about the future is one of my favourite pastimes.
- Richard Branson (1950- ), pictured right,
English founder of the British company, Virgin.
No 23
I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), pictured right,
American president.
No 24
The stupid speak of the past, the wise of the present and fools of the future.
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), pictured
right, French leader.
No 25
Never let the future, disturb you.
- Marcus Aurelius (121-180),
pictured right, Roman emperor and philosopher
No 26
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
- Gautama Buddha (563-483 BC), pictured
right, founder of Buddhism.
No 27
To be ignorant of the past is forever to be a child.
- Cicero (106-43 BC), pictured
right, Roman philosopher and politician
No 28
Let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing.
- Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931), pictured
right, Lebanese-born American philosopher
No 29
The future influences the present just as much as the past.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
(1844-1900), German philosopher (pictured right).
No 30
Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955),
pictured right, German-born American scientist.
No 31
It’s in vain, Trot, to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present,
(David Copperfield in the 1850 novel David
Copperfield).
- Charles Dickens (1812-70), pictured
right, English writer.
No 32
The terrible thing is that it is impossible to tear the past out by the roots.
(Anna in the novel Anna Karenina)
- Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), Russian writer, pictured right.
No 33
Memory always remembers the happy things.
- Bernard Lovell (1913–2012), pictured right, the British astronomer.
No 34
Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.
- Billy Wilder (1906-2002), pictured right, American film director.
No 35
It would be sad, if we missed our future because of our past.
- Charles Handy (pictured right), in Beyond Certainty,
1995.
No 36
The future is not what it was.
- Bernard Levin (1928-2004), English journalist (pictured right)
Steve Jobs, co-founder of
Apple, pictured right, said
something similar in a 1983 speech:
The future isn't what it used to be.
No 37
Be not false about the past
-Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), pictured
right, Italian painter and engineer
No 38
The true paradises are the paradises we have lost.
- Marcel Proust (1871-1922), pictured
right, French writer
No 39
The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.
- Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), pictured right, Irish writer.
No 40
We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.
- Frederick Douglass (1818-95),
American civil rights leader, pictured right.
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