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Past Quotes

“When one becomes for an instant one's former self, that is to say different from what one has been for some time past, one's sensibility, being no longer dulled by habit, receives from the slightest stimulus vivid impressions which make everything that has preceded them fade into insignificance, impressions to which, because of their intensity, we attach ourselves with the momentary enthusiasm of a drunkard.”

Has BeensDifferentSelfPastHabitImpressionEnthusiasmFormerInstantIntensityFadesSensibilityVividStimulusMomentaryDrunkardsInsignificanceTimes Past
Book:In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV: Sodom and Gomorrah (A Modern Library E-Book)
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“We see many instances of cities going down like sinking ships to their destruction. There have been such wrecks in the past and there surely will be others in the future, caused by the wickedness of captains and crews alike. For these are guilty men, whose sin is supreme ignorance of what matters most.”

MenHas BeensMatterPastSinCitiesIgnoranceDestructionSupremeShipsGuiltyInstanceWhat MattersCaptainsCrewWickednessWrecksSinking
Book:Plato's Statesman
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“No one punishes the evil-doer under the notion, or for the reason, that he has done wrong -- only the unreasonable fury of a beast acts in that way. But he who desires to inflict rational punishment does not retaliate for a past wrong, for that which is done cannot be undone, but he has regard to the future, and is desirous that the man who is punished, and he who sees him punished, may be deterred from doing wrong again.”

MenWayMayDoeReasonDonePastDesireEvilHe ManRegardNotionPunishmentRationalBeastFuryUndoneUnreasonableDoersEvil DoersPast Wrongs
Author:Plato
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“Because we have sought to cover up past evil, though it still persists, we have been powerless to check the new evil of today.Evil unchecked grows, Evil tolerated poisons the whole system. And because we have tolerated our past and present evils, international affairs are poisoned and law and justice have disappeared from them.”

Has BeensStillsWholeTodayPastLawEvilGrowsJusticeAffairInternationalChecksPoisonPersistOur PastPowerlessPast And PresentCover UpsLaw And JusticeInternational Affairs
Book:Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru: Advisory Board: M. Chalapathi Rau, H. Y. Sharada Prasad, and B. R. Nanda; General Editor: S. Gopal
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“To be sure, the ancient belief that the dream reveals the future is not entirely devoid of truth. By representing to us a wish as fulfilled the dream certainly leads us into the future; but this future, taken by the dreamer as present, has been formed into the likeness of that past by the indestructible wish.”

Has BeensDreamPastBeliefWishTakenAncientDreamerFulfilledRepresentingIndestructible
Book:THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS - The Royal Road to the Unconscious: Rules of Dream Interpretation: The Dream as a Fulfillment of a Wish, Distortion in Dreams, The Method of Dream Interpretation, The Sources of Dreams & The Psychology of the Dream Activities
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“At one time, many philosophers held that faultless "laws of thought" were somehow inherent, a priori, in the very nature of mind. This belief was twice shaken in the past century; first when Russell and his successors showed how the logic men employ can be defective, and later when Freud and Piaget started to reveal the tortuous ways in which our minds actually develop.”

MenWayMindFirstsPastLawBeliefCenturyLogicPhilosopherOne TimeInherentSuccessorsDefective
Author:Jean Piaget
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“One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore.”

MenInspirationalWisdomMotivationalPastFearChangeLosesCourageAdventureTravelOceanDiscoverySightBraveryPatienceNovelistsLife ChangingExplorationShoreDaringTime TravelDiscoveringTraveledGraduationFunny TravelNew BeginningsAdventurousHave CourageGreat TravelInspiring TravelTravel The WorldTravel AdventureAdventurerAdventure And TravelEssayistsChange For The BetterLife Is An AdventureInspirational MilitaryInspirational AdventureRoads TraveledGreat AdventureLife AdventureCourage StrengthAdventure And LifeNew StartWant To TravelNew DiscoveriesTravel And TourismInspirational CourageNext AdventureInspirational Adventure TimeInspirational New BeginningAccepting ChangeTime And ChangeCourage To ChangeFear Of ChangeNew AdventureCreating ChangeDiscovery In LifeAdventurous SoulsShort TravelLife Changing LoveAdventure And RiskDiscovery And TravelDaring To Be GreatDiscovering The WorldExploration And AdventureAccepting Things
Author:Andre Gide
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“If we assiduously cultivate our powers of exaggeration, perhaps we, too, shall obtain the Paradise of Liars. And there Raphael shall paint for us scores and scores of his manifestly impossible pictures... and Shakespeare will lie to us of fabulous islands far past 'the still-vex'd Bermoothes,' and bring us fresh tales from the coast of Bohemia. For no one will speak the truth there, and we shall all be perfectly happy.”

IfsStillsPastLyingSpeakImpossiblePaintTalesIslandsParadiseScoreLiarsCoastFabulousExaggerationSpeak The TruthRaphaelVexBohemia
Author:James Branch Cabell
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“There are very few things in the mind which eat up as much energy as worry. It is one of the most difficult things not to worry about anything. Worry is experienced when things go wrong, but in relation to past happenings it is idle merely to wish that they might have been otherwise. The frozen past is what it is, and no amount of worrying is going to make it other than what it has been. But the limited ego-mind identifies itself with its past, gets entangled with it and keeps alive the pangs of frustrated desires.”

MindHas BeensMightPastDesireEnergyWishDifficultWorryAliveAmountEgoHappeningsRelationFrustratedIdleFrozenMight Have BeenDifficult ThingsWhen Things Go Wrong
Author:Meher Baba
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“As the United States continues its slow but steady recovery from the depths of the financial crisis, nobody actually wants a massive austerity package to shock the economy back into recession, and so the odds have always been high that the game of budgetary chicken will stop short of disaster. Looming past the cliff, however, is a deep chasm that poses a much greater challenge -- the retooling of the country's economy, society, and government necessary for the United States to perform effectively in the twenty-first century.”

WantFirstsCountryStatesGovernmentPastGamesChallengesUnitedUnited StatesEconomyGreaterCenturyTwentiesCrisisDepthFinancialDisasterRecoveryShockMassiveChickensSteadyOddsPackagesCliffsRecessionsFinancial CrisisChasmsAusterityLooming
Author:Fareed Zakaria
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“Our principle is: to prevent all command over man by his fellowmen, to, make state, government, laws, or whatsoever form of compulsion existing, a thing of the past, to establish full freedom for all. Anarchism means first and foremost freedom from all government.”

MenFirstsMeanStatesGovernmentPastFormLawPrinciplesCommandCompulsionAnarchismState Government
Book:The Social Monster: A Paper on Communism and Anarchism
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“The people of America are red, white, black, yellow, and all the shades in between. Their eyes are blue, black, and brown, and all the shades in between. Their hair is straight, curly, kinky, and most of it in between. They are tall and short, slim and fat, athletic and anaemic, and most of them in between. They are the different peoples of the world becoming more and more the "in between." They are a people creating a new bridge of mankind in between the past of narrow nationalistic chauvinism and the horizon of a new mankind--a people of the world. Their face is the face of the future.”

PeopleWorldDifferentEyeAmericaPastFacesBlackWhiteMankindHairBecomingCreatingRedBlueFatsBridgesBrownTallHorizonShadeYellowAthleticDifferent PeoplesBecoming MoreSlimKinkyChauvinismNationalistic
Book:Reveille for Radicals
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“The American people were, in the beginning, Revolutionaries and Tories. The American people ever since have been Revolutionaries and Tories. They have been Revolutionaries and Tories regardless of the labels of the past and present. Regardless of whether they were Federalists, Democrat-Republicans, Whigs, Know-Nothings, Free Soilers, Unionists or Confederates, Populists, Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, Communists, or Progressives. They have been and are profiteers and patriots. They have been and are conservatives, liberals, and radicals.”

PeopleKnowsHas BeensPastRepublicanDemocratRadicalLabelsRevolutionaryCommunistPatriotPast And PresentPopulistFederalistConfederate
Author:Saul Alinsky
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“While I complain of being able to glimpse no more than the shadow of the past, I may be insensitive to reality as it is taking shape at this very moment, since I have not reached the stage of development at which I would be capable of perceiving it. A few hundred years hence, in this same place, another traveller, as despairing as myself, will mourn the disappearance of what I might have seen, but failed to see.”

YearsMayMomentsRealityMightWould BeAblePastStageDevelopmentShapesCapableHundredShadowComplainingGlimpseMournTravellerDisappearanceInsensitiveStages Of Development
Book:Tristes Tropiques
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“What joins the Americans one to another is not a common ancestry, language or race, but a shared work of the imagination that looks forward to the making of a future, not backward to the insignia of the past. Their enterprise is underwritten by a Constitution that allows for the widest horizons of sight and the broadest range of expression, supports the liberties of the people as opposed to the ambitions of the state, and stands as premise for a narrative rather than plan for an invasion or a monument. The narrative was always plural; not one story, many stories.”

PeopleLooksStatesStoriesAmericaPastLanguageImaginationCommonRaceLibertySupportPlansExpressionAmbitionSightConstitutionNarrativeRangeEnterpriseHorizonMonumentInvasionPremisesAncestry
Author:Lewis H. Lapham
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“Television is a new, hard test of our wisdom. If we succeed in mastering the new medium it will enrich us. But it can also put our mind to sleep. We must not forget that in the past the inability to transport immediate experience and to convey it to others made the use of language necessary and thus compelled the human mind to develop concepts. For in order to describe things one must draw the general from the specific; one must select, compare, think. When communication can be achieved by pointing with the finger, however, the mouth grows silent, the writing hand stops, and the mind shrinks.”

IfsThinkingWritingMindHumansMadeHardUseHandsPastOrderLanguageGrowsSleepForgetTelevisionCommunicationSucceedDrawsMouthsConceptsTestsSilentFingersMediumsCompareHuman MindCompelledInabilityPointingShrinksSelectTransportUse Of Language
Book:Film as Art
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“I have never concealed the fact and said it before the court in 1938 that I came from an anti-Semitic past and tradition... I ask only that you look at my life historically and take it as history. I believe that from 1933 I truly represented the Lutheran-Christian outlook on the Jewish question - as I revealed before the court - but that I returned home after eight years' imprisonment as a completely different person.”

YearsBelieveLooksPersonsSaidDifferentFactsHomeChristianPastAsksI BelieveTraditionCourtEightOutlookConcealedImprisonmentAnti SemiticLutherans
Author:Martin Niemoller
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“The woe of mortality makes humans God-like. It is because we know that we must die that we are so busy making life. It is because we are aware of mortality that we preserve the past and create the future. Mortality is ours without asking--but immortality is something we must build ourselves. Immortality is not a mere absence of death; it is defiance and denial of death. It is 'meaningful' only because there is death, that implacable reality which is to be defied.”

KnowsHumansRealityPastDiesAskingMereBusyAbsenceMeaningfulDenialPreservesImmortalityMortalityWoeDefianceDenial Of Death
Author:Zygmunt Bauman
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