Past and Future

To most men, experience is like the stern lights of a ship, which illumine only the track it has passed.

So different are the colors of life as we look forward to the future, or backward to the past . . . that the conversation of the old and young ends generally with contempt or pity on either side.

In the carriages of the past you can’t go anywhere.

Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.

THE AFTERNOON KNOWS WHAT THE MORNING NEVER SUSPECTED.

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

You can never plan the future by the past.

Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems—but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems incredible.

Life can only be understood backwards…But it must be lived forwards.

Nothing is permanent but change.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.

Life is no `brief candle' to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I've got to hold up for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

I live in the present. I only remember the past, and anticipate the future.

We can chart our future clearly and wisely only when we know the path which has led to the present.

Long-range planning does not deal with future decisions, but with the future of present decisions.

Plan for the future, because that is where you are going to spend the rest of your life.

Children don’t heed the life experiences of their parents, and nations ignore history. Bad lessons always have to be learned anew.

For those of us who believe in physics, the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?

Ultima Cumaei venit iam carminis aetas;

‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

I met a traveller from an antique land

The world’s great age begins anew,

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.