Are we like late Rome, infatuated with past glories, ruled by a complacent, greedy elite, and hopelessly powerless to respond to changing conditions?
The fact disclosed by a survey of the past that majorities have been wrong must not blind us to the complementary fact that majorities have usually not been entirely wrong.
Instead of receding, the past actually becomes more important. That's what will happen to you. It sounds unlikely, but the past actually changes complexion as you get older.
I discovered that the study of past philosophers is of little use unless our own reality enters into it. Our reality alone allows the thinker's questions to become comprehensible.
Having led many negotiations with countries outside the E.U. in the past, we would never enter the same compromises and reach the same good outcomes with states that don't shoulder the responsibilities and costs of the common market.
I think computing power is ready to do 3D justice. It was great for shooters and racing games in the past, but I didn't think it was right for strategy games.
It's not to much fun to know yourself too well or think you do - everyone needs a little conceit to carry them through & past the falls.
Immunity to obsolescence is the only obsolescent-immune conceit of the past millennium.
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.
With thoughts of the past and concerns about the future, we rob ourselves of a full experience of the present.
Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
In my family, education was something you endured. My parents weren't educated past high school, and the only book in our house was a 'Reader's Digest' condensed book. Can you imagine?
My work is as an ethnographic rescuer: a conduit between past and future generations. The urgency of this effort cannot be overstated.
There is something deeply disturbing about a popular culture that will not forgive the sins of the Confederacy seven generations past but celebrates the teachings and legacies of Che Guevara, Mao Zhe-Dong, and Jeremy Wright.
Those who claim that to leave the E.U. would damage the City are the very same as those who in the past confidently predicted, with a classic failure of understanding, that the City would be gravely damaged if the U.K. failed to adopt the euro as its currency.
Confirming John Roberts would endanger much of the progress made by the nation in civil rights over the past half century.
Fashion in the past meant conforming and losing oneself. Fashion in the present means being individual and finding oneself.
Working together during the past three years, we have confounded the skeptics and the cynics. We've shown that here in Virginia, Democrats and Republicans can come together, put politics aside, and make tough decisions when times demand it.
We continue to confront racism from our past and our present, which is why we must hold everyone, from the highest offices to our own families, accountable for racist words and deeds and call racism what it is - wrong.
