Past Relevance Quotes

...why bother remembering a past that cannot be made into a present?

The past is never dead. It’s not even past.

I feel like history is about going and discovering the great human stories that just are every bit as relevant as anything that's going on today.

We shall not understand the history of men and other times unless we ourselves are alive to the requirements which that history satisfied.

I also wanted remembering the past relevant to the present. Some people wanted me to put the names in alphabetical order. I wanted them in chronological order so that a veteran could find his time within the panel. It's like a thread of life.

We need history, not to tell us what happened or to explain the past, but to make the past alive so that it can explain us and make a future possible.

We make a mistake to condescend to the past as if it were preparatory to our own time.

I think there's a preoccupation with the American market to make excuses and justify its past. If it isn't current, it means somebody has to make an excuse for it. If it's 'cult,' it gives it a sense of illegitimate legitimacy.

What's really interesting to me is to have a connection to what was going on in the past, but to make it a living thing.

The past is a room full of baggage and rubbish and sometimes things that are of use, but if they are of real use, I have kept them.

To grasp the meaning of the world of today we use a language created to express the world of yesterday. The life of the past seems to us nearer our true natures, but only for the reason that it is nearer our language.

The past is not dead, it is living in us, and will be alive in the future which we are now helping to make.

Our spirit of life is not identical with that of our ancestors, and therefore their music, even if restored with utter technical perfections, can never have to us precisely the same meaning it had for them. We cannot tear down the barricade that separates the present world from things and deeds past.

But now isn’t simply now. Now is also a cold reminder: one whole day later than yesterday, one year later than last year. Every now is labeled with its date, rendering all past nows obsolete, until — later of sooner — perhaps — no, not perhaps — quite certainly: it will come.

In the West we cling to the past like limpets. In Haiti the present is the axis of all life. As in Africa, past and future are but distant measures of the present, and memories are as meaningless as promises.

Like the philosopher, the author views his task as one of establishing a clear connection between life and history, and of making the past bear fruit for the present and future.

The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence

People always want to pin yesterday's news on you, as opposed to asking you what you're going to do for the future, what you're doing today.

Conventional wisdom is invariably out of date. Because in the time it has taken to become conventional - to become what everyone believes - the world has moved on. Conventional wisdom is a remnant of the past.

The present can try to bury the past, an operation that is most atrocious when it is most successful.

I don't think it matters where I came from any more.

History does not move by leaps into unrelated novelty, but rather by the selective emphasis of aspects of its own immediate past.

you are yesterday's bouquet so sadly raided

Do not be afraid of the past. If people tell you that it is irrevocable, do not believe them. The past, the present and the future are but one moment in the sight of God, in whose sight we should try to live. Time and space, succession and extension, are merely accidental conditions of thought. The imagination can transcend them.

Today, we don't talk about history. The past is two weeks ago, and the future is two weeks after.