61 Quotes About the Past and the Future

 

Do you live in the past, the present, or the future?

The past evokes your memories of times gone by.

The present captures your focus in the here and now.

The future encompasses your vision of what is forthcoming.

Whether your mind lingers on what has been, what is, or what will be, enjoy these quotes about the past and the future.

 

Quotes About the Past and the Future

Whether we remain the ash or become the phoenix is up to us. ~ Ming-Dao Deng

Don’t let the sadness from the past and fear of the future ruin the happiness of the present. ~ Scott Mescudi (aka Kid Cudi)

There is a fine balance between honoring the past and losing yourself in it. ~ Eckhart Tolle

In the great inconstancy and crowd of events, nothing is certain except the past. ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space. ~ Johnny Cash

The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power. ~ Anonymous

Times and conditions change so rapidly that we must keep our aim constantly focused on the future. ~ Walt Disney

What is past is set in endless night, to live only in our fleeting recollections, to glimmer in our decaying and treacherous memories, that varnish past scenes with such illusive art, that we hang even upon our past follies with delight. ~ Sir Richard Maltravers

Every moment wasted looking back, keeps us from moving forward. ~ Hillary Clinton

The obstacles of your past can become the gateways that lead to new beginnings. ~ Ralph Blum

The future is a great land...it is wider than the vision and has no end. ~ Donald Grant Mitchell

When we think we have been hurt by someone in the past, we build up defenses to protect ourselves from being hurt in the future. So the fearful past causes a fearful future and the past and future become one. ~ Gerald G. Jampolsky

...it is natural that the old should extol the days of their youth; the weak, the era of their strength; the sick, the season of their vigor; and the disappointed, the springtide of their hopes! ~ Caleb Bingham

I am learning to love the sound of my feet walking away from things not meant for me. ~ Anonymous

It is delightful to transport one’s self into the spirit of the past, to see how a wise man has thought before us, and to what a glorious height we have at last reached. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We take pleasure in looking into the future because we think that we may be able by our silent wishes to guide in our own favor what is undetermined... ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

What is past, however it may be blamed, cannot be retrieved. ~ Titus Livy

You’re not bound by the past; that is who you used to be. ~ Shannon L. Alder

Those who accuse mankind of folly in hankering and panting after things to come, and who warn us to enjoy the present, and to take our fill of it...have hit upon one of the most common of human delusions. ~ Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

We are never occupied with what is within us; we are always looking beyond. ~ Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Fear, desire, hope are spurring us on toward the future, stripping us of all feeling and thought about what is, in order to amuse us with what will be, even when we shall be no more. ~ Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Revere the past; but remember that we cannot live in it. ~ John Frederic Daniell

We don’t need to reach the end of the road to learn that we were on the wrong road. ~ Assegid Habtewold

If the past calls up no regrets, our lives will be happy in the present, and our hopes bright in the future. We mourn too much over the past and let the present fly from us. ~ James Ellis

When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

We grow old as our memories outweigh our dreams. ~ Jeremy Oehlert

He who has no future, has no life; he exists, but does not live. ~ Orestes Augustus Brownson

Stop being a prisoner of your past. Become the architect of your future. ~ Robin Sharma

Our reverence for the past is just in proportion to our ignorance of it. ~ Theodore Parker

Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities. ~ Stephen Hawking

The fear of the future is worse than the fortune of the present moment. ~ Marcus Fabius Quintilian

The past is a stepping stone, not a millstone. ~ Robert Plant

It is vain to be always looking toward the future, and never acting toward it. ~ J. F. Boyse

My parents taught me to never give up and to always believe that my future could be whatever I dreamt it to be. ~ Susana Martinez

The future is always fairy-land to the young. ~ George Augustus Sala

Life is like a beautiful and winding lane, on either side bright flowers, and beautiful butterflies, and tempting fruits, which we scarcely pause to admire and to taste, so eager are we to hasten to an opening which we imagine will be more beautiful still. ~ George Augustus Sala

But by degrees, as we advance, the trees grow bleak; the flowers and butterflies fail, the fruits disappear, and we find we have arrived—to reach a desert waste. ~ George Augustus Sala

As warmth makes even glaciers trickle, and opens streams in the ribs of frozen mountains, so the heart knows the full flow and life of its grief, only when it begins to melt and pass away. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

We must wait for the future, and enjoy or bear the present. ~ Wilhelm von Humboldt

The past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past, even while we attempt to define it... ~ Charles Caleb Colton

The most effective way to change your habits is to focus not on what you want to achieve, but on who you wish to become. ~ James Clear

No man on earth has ever yet found any sure presage from Heaven about his future success, for the indications of coming events are impervious to mortals. ~ Pindarus

Study the past if you would divine the future. ~ Confucius

The curtain of the future is always down. ~ John Bigelow

The golden age is not in the past, but in the future. ~ Edwin Hubbell Chapin

Look not mournfully into the past—it comes not back again. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Wisely improve the present—it is thine. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear, and with a manly heart. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The past is dead, and has no resurrection; but the future is endowed with such a life that it lives to us even in anticipation. ~ Henry Kirke White

The past is, in many things, the foe of mankind; the future is, in all things, our friend. For the past is no hope; the future is both hope and fruition. ~ Henry Kirke White

The past is the text-book of tyrants; the future the bible of the free. ~ Henry Kirke White

Those who are solely governed by the past stand, like Lot’s wife, crystalized in the act of looking backward, and forever incapable of looking forward. ~ Henry Kirke White

Let us make our future now, and let us make our dreams tomorrow’s reality. ~ Malala Yousafzai

If the future is to remain open and free, we need people who can tolerate the unknown, who will not need the support of completely worked out systems or traditional blueprints from the past. ~ Margaret Mead

Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin. ~ Mother Teresa

We are the hope of those boys who have so little, who’ve been told that they cannot have what they dream, that they cannot be what they imagine. Yes, they can. ~ Barack Obama

We are the hope of the father who goes to work before dawn and lies awake with doubt that tells him he cannot give his children the same opportunities that someone gave him. Yes, he can. ~ Barack Obama

We are the hope of the woman who hears that her city will not be rebuilt, that she cannot somehow claim the life that was swept away in a terrible storm. Yes, she can. ~ Barack Obama

We are the hope of the future, the answer to the cynics who tell us our house must stand divided, that we cannot come together, that we cannot remake this world as it should be. ~ Barack Obama

We have to choose between change and more of the same. We have to choose between looking backwards and looking forward. We have to choose between our future and our past. ~ Barack Obama

 

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