T Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with T. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“The past folds accordion-like into the present. Different media have different event horizons—for the written word, three millennia; for recorded sound, a century and a half—and within their time frames the old becomes as accessible as the new. Yellowed newspapers come back to life. Under headings of 50 Years Ago and 100 Years Ago, veteran publications recycle their archives: recipes, card-play techniques, science, gossip, once out of print and now ready for use. Record companies rummage through their attics to release, or re-release, every scrap of music, rarities, B-sides, and bootlegs. For a certain time, collectors, scholars, or fans possessed their books and their records. There was a line between what they had and what they did not. For some, the music they owned (or the books, or the videos) became part of who they were. That line fades away. Most of Sophocles' plays are lost, but those that survive are available at the touch of a button. Most of Bach's music was unknown to Beethoven; we have it all—partitas, cantatas, and ringtones. It comes to us instantly, or at light speed. It is a symptom of omniscience. It is what the critic Alex Ross calls the Infinite Playlist, and he sees how mixed is the blessing: "anxiety in place of fulfillment, and addictive cycle of craving and malaise. No sooner has one experience begun than the thought of what else is out there intrudes." The embarrassment of riches. Another reminder that information is not knowledge, and knowledge is not wisdom.”
Source: The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
“The past forty years of economic history have been a story of systematically weakening the power of the public sphere, unmaking regulatory bodies, lowering taxes for the wealthy, and selling off essential services to the private sector. All the while, union power has been dramatically eroded and the public has been trained in helplessness: no matter how big the problem, we have been told, it's best to leave it to the market or billionaire philanthro-capitalists, to get out of the way, to stop fighting to fix problems at their root.”
Source: On Fire : The Burning Case for a Green New Deal
“The past/future can't be changed! The things which are written to happen, they
can't be skipped.”
Source: The Life Of One Kid
“The past gives great examples of what can happen in the future. It's always important to remember.”
“The past gives you no justice. Sentences are passed. But that doesn't mean you get justice. You can stand there forever and rail and say, 'Someone has to pay. I want what was taken from me.' But you're just going to get silence coming back at you. The past doesn't pay. We pay. And we're all free to decide when we've had enough.”
Source: After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story
“The past glories of Islamic civilization show that it was once able
to progress. That progress was based upon a different set of ideas,
antithetical to those of the Islamists, who would have been considered
heretical then.”
Source: The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis
“The past goes right on pulling me apart, though I can scarcely remember the people or the issues.”
“The past grows gradually around one, like a placenta for dying.”
Source: And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos
“The past had already been dealt with, to one end or another, it was certain, fixed, the horror of it was already over.
For the living at least. They grieved, yes, but they were not trapped in the terror of the moment.
Not so for my poor, elegant wraiths. They were like the old-fashioned zoetropes you find at the seaside: a tiny slice of a world in a box, brief yet somehow also eternal.”
Source: Chasing Azrael
“The past had shown him many times that the future would be its own solution.”
Source: Solar
“The past hadn't been erased just because a new future had been handed it.”
“The past happened, and the future will happen, now.”
“The past has a way of circling back when it’s ready. Best not to chase it before it finds you.”
Source: Willowmere Wonders: The Elemental Stones
“The past has always been the handmaid of authority.”
Source: The Death of the Past
“The past has been a mint Of blood and sorrow. That must not be True of tomorrow.”
Source: The Poems, 1951-1967
“The past, has been erased; the present, forgiven; and the future, redeemed.”
“The past has been given to us. The future must be built, as others have built our past.”
Source: Sing Out the Glory
“The past has been there all along, reminding us: This time--maybe, hopefully, against all odds, we will get it right.”
Source: Factory Girls: Voices from the Heart of Modern China
“The past has flown away. The coming month and year do not exist. Ours only is the present's tiny point.”
Source: The Secret Rose Garden
“The past has given us much too many bad answers for us not to see that the mistakes were in the questions themselves. There is no need to choose between the fetishism of spontaneity and the organization control; between the "come one, come all" of activist networks and the discipline of hierarchy; between acting desperately now and waiting desperately for later; between bracketing that which is to be lived and experimented in the name of paradise that seems more and more like a hell the longer it is put off and flogging the dead horse of how planting carrots is enough to leave this nightmare.”
Source: The Coming Insurrection
“The past has great treasure. The present has extraordinary riches. The future has exponential wealth.”
“The past has had its turn, the future will have its time, but the stage belongs to the present. It is here, and nowhere else, that the drama of life unfolds.”
Source: The Power of the Present: A Stoic's Guide to Unyielding Focus
“The past has infinite value if one learns from it.”
“the past has no existence except as it is recorded in the present. (...) we would seem forced to say that no phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon. The universe does not 'exist, out there' independent of all acts of observation. Instead, it is in some strange sense a participatory universe”
“The past has no power over the present moment.”
“The past has no power over us. It doesn't matter how long we have had a negative pattern. The point of power is in the present moment. What a wonderful thing to realize! We can begin to be free in this moment!”
Source: You Can Heal Your Life Gift
“The past has no power to stop you from being present now. Only your grievance about the past can do that. What is grievance? The baggage of old thought and emotion.”
“The past has passed; the time for grace is now! Let's respond to the grace of this moment with the gifts of the Spirit active in our lives.”
“The past has revealed to me the structure of the future.”
“The past has to be remembered, so that it's never repeated.”
Source: Flights of Love
“The past has to be seen to be dead; or the past will kill.”
Source: India: Picador Classic
“The past has to inform the present...”
“The past has too much knowledge embedded in it, and therefore it's best to forget it and start anew.”
“The past haunts the present in more ways than we think. It certainly scares the living daylights out of ME"~ Old Wrinkly”
“The past haunts the present in mores ways than we realize. It certainly scares the living daylights out of me.”
“the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion”
Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns
“The past, her happiness with James - memories brushed against her skin like gossamer shadows, alive but not alive, ghosts standing sentinel, watching as she went about her daily round.”
Source: Journey to Munich
“The past history of human belief is a cautionary tale. We have killed thousands of our fellow human beings because we believed they had signed a contract with the devil, and had become witches. We still kill more than a thousand people each year for witchcraft. In my view, there is only one hope for humankind to emerge from what Carl Sagan called "the demon-haunted world" of our past. That hope is science.”
“The past history of our globe must be explained by what can be seen to be happening now. No powers are to be employed that are not natural to the globe, no action to be admitted except those of which we know the principle.”
“The past holds the key to understanding the present, if only we have the courage to confront it.”
Source: The Ballad of Frankie Silver
“The past in New Orleans cohabits with the present to an extent not even approximated in any other North American city.”
Source: Why New Orleans Matters
“The past in retrospect holds manifold disenchantments, failures and even tragedies; and yet the worse may be forgotten and the best held fast.”
“The past in the hands of historians is not what it was.”
“The past influences everything and dictates nothing.”
Source: Darwin's Worms
“The past is a bad invention that keeps on happening
And it hurts to think about, like an unpaid bill
It's the wind dragging the desert backwards at night
& it burns you, like a pastel whip”
Source: Hera Lindsay Bird
“The past is a beautiful illusion trap of sweet memories. the more you remember it the more you get trapped in it and thus your life never changes.”
“The past is a blueprint to create the future by the educated choices we make in the present.”
“The past is a bucket of ashes”
“The past is a candle at great distance: too close to let you quit, too far to comfort you.”
Source: Away: A Novel
“The past is a closed door.”
Source: The Year Of The Flood