Recent Past Quotes

We humans appear on the cosmic calendar so recently that our recorded history occupies only the last few seconds of the last minute of December 31st.

The economic and social decline of Zimbabwe is shocking and appalling. Life there is unrecognisable from that of the recent past. Each day is a struggle for basic survival.

I'm not an historian but I can get interested - obsessively interested - with any aspect of the past, whether it's palaeontology or archaeology or the very recent past.

The last few years have been pretty hectic.

Have you heard a single national figure tell you all of the crises of the recent past are not economic, they're cultural?

There is progress taking place, growth is better. We're only talking about two years there.

Almost the first thing Obama did in the White House was to return the bust of Winston Churchill to the British embassy. That suggests a major re-ordering of things. It'll be fascinating to see what happens from now on. It was a genuine break with the recent past - perhaps to re-connect with the past past.

There's nothing in the recent past I want to write about.

The recent past always presents itself as if destroyed by catastrophes.

[talking about the Holocaust] 'But to put something in context is a step towards saying it can be understood and that it can be explained. And if it can be explained that it can be explained away.' 'But this is History. Distance yourselves. Our perspective on the past alters. Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground. We don't see it, and because we don't see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past. And one of the historian's jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be... even on the Holocaust.

The unhistorical are usually, without knowing it, enslaved to a fairly recent past.

When I say I hate nostalgia, I hate things set in the recent past where everything is shiny and new.

Reading recent history is good to humble yourself, and also to feel some hopefulness that there is progress.

There's no present. There's only the immediate future and the recent past.

Every year white people add 100 years to how long ago slavery was. I've heard educated white people say, 'slavery was 400 years ago.' No it very wasn't. It was 140 years ago...that's two 70-year-old ladies living and dying back to back. That's how recently you could buy a guy.

When you visualize the recent past, do you see it as being somewhere over on the left?

The philosophy of poetry must acknowledge that the poetic act has no past, at least no recent past, in which its preparation and appearance could be followed.

As an entrepreneur and employer, in the fairly recent past I have been astonished at how difficult it has been to get young people to take the idea of getting a job seriously.

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

The BBC TV programme 'Back In Time For Dinner' doesn't just have one of the cleverest titles ever. It is a more-than-usually-serious attempt to recreate the recent past, the day before yesterday.

The only important thing to realise about history is that it all took place in the last five minutes.

In her final years she would still recall the trip that, with the perverse lucidity of nostalgia, became more and more recent in her memory.

I don't really understand why we are paid less than the male actors, because we put equal efforts, and recent past has shown that actresses can deliver a hit film. We deserve better pay, equal to what actors get.

When you look back, history is not going to be kind to these last 16 years from 2000 to 2016.

I valued the experience of making the recordings, and I value the performances contained therein, and I value so much of what they can represent. I also think they're a terrific listening experience. Putting them out this way was a way of trying to maintain and nurture the relationship with the audience and also shine a light on the recent past, because we are so apt to be forgetful as human beings that there was such a thing as a recent past. These are some of the reasons for making this record.