Understanding the past requires pretending that you don't know the present. It requires feeling its own pressure on your pulses without any ex post facto illumination.
Latin Americans hold on tight even to pain and suffering preferring a certain present to an uncertain future/
We must look at alternatives objectively, and not try to fit the future into our present social mould.
Understanding the past requires pretending that you don't know the present.
I don't think anyone is thinking long-term now.
We ought not to endeavor to revise history according to our latter day notions of what things ought to have been, or upon the theory that the past is simply a reflection of the present
Most people are perpetually locked in the present. Their decisions are overly influenced by the most immediate event; they easily become emotional and ascribe greater significance to a problem than it should have in reality.
I have no expectation that any man will read history aright who thinks that what was done in a remote age, by men whose names have resounded far, has any deeper sense than what he is doing today.
One usually understands the art of the past by applying the conventions of the present thus misunderstanding the art of the past.
One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.
History should not be written to make the present generation feel good but to remind us that human affairs are complicated.
We must delve deep into history the better to engage a true dialogue of civilisations. Fear of the present can impose upon the past its own biased vision.
It is difficult to judge the past by the criteria of the present.
Avarice misapprehends itself almost always. There is no passion which more often will miss its aim, nor upon which the present has so much influence to the prejudice of the future.
Too often the past has been twisted to fit the visions and agendas of the present.
When given the choice, we’d all rather be happy now … even if that guarantees we’ll all be sad later.
Can we ever understand the past, or do we just endlessly rework it to suit us in the present?
History is full of people who thought they were right -- absolutely right, completely right, without a shadow of a doubt. And because history never seems like history when you are living through it, it is tempting for us to think the same.
