Past Quotes

Our ascendancy of the past two centuries - first Europe and then the U.S. - has bred a western-centric mentality: the West is the fount of all wisdom. We think of ourselves as open-minded, but our sense of superiority has closed our minds. We never entertained the idea that China could surpass the U.S.

~ Martin Jacques

Car ownership as we know it will change. The promise of car ownership of the past, the freedom of open roads... the reality has been more of a burden.

~ John Zimmer

I realize at one point, that I was being followed, and then I began to see the surveillance that was going past the road on my house. And so, these cars began to surveil me. People began to follow me around, and it did, it was very disrupting to think that your privacy was being violated, and for no reason that I could come up with.

~ Gloria Naylor

Let love flow so that it cleanses the world. Then man can live in peace, instead of the state of turmoil he has created through his past ways of life, with all those material interests and earthly ambitions.

~ Sai Baba

You do indeed have a past, but not now! And, yes, you have a future, but not now! You can consume your now with thoughts of 'then' and 'maybe,' but that will keep you from the inner peace you could experience.

~ Wayne Dyer

In every man the memory of the struggles and the heroes of the past is alive. But these memories are not incompatible with the desire for peace in the future.

~ Gustav Stresemann

The days of the Pentagon Papers debates seem long past, when a sudden transparency yielded insight into fights over war and peace and freedom and security; the transparency afforded by Twitter and Facebook yields insights that extend no further than a lawmaker's boundless narcissism and a culture's pitiless prurience.

~ Nancy Gibbs

Man does find in Nature deliverance from himself, oblivion of his past, with peace and purity!

~ George A. Smith

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.

~ Buddha

Going by my past journey, I am not certain where life will take me, what turns and twists will happen; nobody knows where they will end up. As life changes direction, I'll flow with it.

~ Katrina Kaif

I am not someone who is ashamed of my past. I'm actually really proud. I know I made a lot of mistakes, but they, in turn, were my life lessons.

~ Drew Barrymore

Life is divided into three terms - that which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present, to live better in the future.

~ William Wordsworth

With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.

~ George Eliot

To be able to look back upon one's past life with satisfaction is to live twice.

~ Lord Acton

My life is every moment of my life. It is not a culmination of the past.

~ Hugh Leonard

Look back, and smile on perils past.

~ Walter Scott

A bland smile is like a green light at an intersection, it feels good when you get one, but you forget it the moment you're past it.

~ Douglas Coupland

What I'd really like to write is a romantic comedy. This is my favorite kind of movie. I feel almost embarrassed revealing this, because the genre has been so degraded in the past twenty years that saying you like romantic comedies is essentially an admission of mild stupidity.

~ Mindy Kaling

You do your work as a photographer and everything becomes past. Words are more like thoughts; the photographer's picture is always surrounded by a kind of romantic glamor - no matter what you do, and how you twist it.

~ Robert Frank

When I was 18, I thought that, to be a romantic, you couldn't live past 30.

~ David Bowie

Wine writers have been around for almost as long as there has been wine, but in the past, generally speaking, most wine writing was uncritical and emphasized wine as a romantic, historic beverage. Criticism and comparative tastings were eschewed for fear of offending the trade, which most writers depended upon for survival.

~ Robert M. Parker

Many people with physical disabilities have romantic lives and good marriages to partners who see past their disabilities and recognize all of the things they can do.

~ Jeanne Phillips

Memories are thoughts that arise. They're not realities. Only when you believe that they are real, then they have the power over you. But when you realize it's just another thought arising about the past, then you can have a spacious relationship with that thought. The thought no longer has you in its grip.

~ Eckhart Tolle

Not to sound too Dr. Phil all of a sudden, but I think the key to survival is to embrace one's past and to not run away from it. And to come to some sort of relationship with it or understanding of it.

~ Anderson Cooper

Umm... I don't judge my relationship with Puff or Bad Boy according to other people or past artists. At the end of the day, you are in charge of your career, and you can't depend on no man to do anything for you. I've learned to judge relationships with a person on myself and that person, not what they have done with previous people.

~ French Montana

We just want to win. That's the bottom line. I think a lot of times people may become content with one championship or a little bit of success, but we don't really reflect on what we've done in the past. We focus on the present.

~ Derek Jeter

In hindsight, I slid into arrogance based upon past success.

~ Reed Hastings

Past success is no guarantee of future success, so I have learned to be an entrepreneur. I began to produce and direct my own projects.

~ Ian Ziering

Success follows those adept at preserving the substance of the past by clothing it in the forms of the future.

~ Dee Hock

Everyone sort of sees his own life and times as being ephemeral. One thinks that everything good or important that happened, happened in the past. But I think that seeing scenes that you are used to, but with the heightening effects of poetry, perhaps makes you value your life and times more than you might otherwise do.

~ Vikram Seth

I don't think American poetry has gotten any better in the past 35 years. Oddly enough, creative writing programs seem to have been good for fiction, and I would not have predicted that.

~ Robert Morgan

I'm conscious of a series of circles working its way through my life. And at this particular moment I have come round to the beginning of my writing cycle. It begins with poetry. There's hardly a day that goes past on which I don't write poetry.

~ Ben Okri

Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many - not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

~ Charles Dickens

Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.

~ Soren Kierkegaard

There will always be men struggling to change, and there will always be those who are controlled by the past.

~ Ernest Gaines

I turned to music originally because of my past and needing a release or an outlet to get out anger or frustration or hurt.

~ Christina Aguilera

When our neighbor's personality possesses harsh qualities, we show our love by not voluntarily provoking those qualities in any way. Past experience shows us what upsets a person, so in their presence we are careful not to do or say those things that cause anger. We are self-effacing.

~ Mother Angelica

September 11 was a wake-up call to me. I don't want to contribute to the hate in any shape or form. I now regret in the past being silent about what I have heard in the Islamic discourse and being part of that with my own anger.

~ Hamza Yusuf

Green Arrow has gone through so many changes; he's been right-wing, he's been left-wing, he's been rich, he's been poor, he's been a social justice guy, then when I got him, he was a rich playboy guy. So it was a lot harder to get into a character that has so many personas in the past, and I just looked at his anger.

~ Ann Nocenti