Presentism Quotes

All history is contemporary history.

There is not past, no future; everything flows in an eternal present.

The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency - the belief that the here and now is all there is.

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day be day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except the endless present in which the party is always right.

There is nothing else than now. There is neither yesterday, certainly, nor is there any tomorrow. How old must you be before you know that? There is only now, and if now is only two days, then two days is your life and everything in it will be in proportion. This is how you live a life in two days. And if you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get, you will have a good life. A good life is not measured by any biblical span.

Today’s headlines and history’s judgment are rarely the same.

The meeting of two eternities, the past and future....is precisely the present moment.

Have we reached the ultimate age of absurdity where some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, while other people are not held responsible for what they are doing today?

All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.

We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's dam is the history we make today.

Doing history with integrity requires us to interpret elements of the past not through the optics of the present but within the worlds of our historical actors.

The past history of our globe must be explained by what can be seen to be happening now. No powers are to be employed that are not natural to the globe, no action to be admitted except those of which we know the principle.

Today is, after all, today, but yesterday is of the same substance as tomorrow.

Best not to mix the past with the present. The present paints the past with gold. The past paints the present with lead.

I really think that if you live for today, tomorrow takes care of itself.

When people talk about the good old days, I say to people, 'It's not the days that are old, it's you that's old.' I hate the good old days. What is important is that today is good.

I'm an old hippie who lives in the now. I seldom look forward, but we have to.

Men have no right to put the well-being of the present generation wholly out of the question. Perhaps the only moral trust with any certainty in our hands is the care of our own time.

I believe in living each day as it comes, to the best of my ability. When it's done, I put it away, remembering that there will be a tomorrow to take it's place. If I have any philosophy, that's it. To me it's not a fatalistic attitude.

Time is not a line, but a series of now-points.

Our interest in history always reflects our own times.

History is contemporary. Your understanding of history confirms what you think of the present. It's not neutral. I would be very surprised if people with a different view of the present, don't take issue with my view of the past. I just hope that people deal with the content of the film.

History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.

The present necessarily betrays the past.

The past was nothing to her; offered no lesson which she was willing to heed. The future was a mystery which she never attempted to penetrate. The present alone was significant.