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Past Quotes

“When I train, I love to take time off and fly to the Natural History Museum or an exhibition. I just love that. When you know your past, it will help you with your future… That’s why most of my friends are not fighters. Most of my friends are nerds like me. That’s why I have a hard time finding a girlfriend. I need someone to talk science with. I’m married to my work right now. But you never know. One day I could wake up and just do something different. Life is so unpredictable.”

KnowsNeedsDifferentHardHelpingPastLife IsNaturalRight NowOne DayFindingsMarriedMy FriendsWake UpTrainLike MeFighterGirlfriendHard TimesMuseumsOur FutureTake TimeOur PastUnpredictableNerdYour FutureYour PastExhibitionsTime OffNatural HistoryDifferent Life
Author:Georges St-Pierre
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“In retrospect, the past seems not one existence with a continuous flow of years and events that follow each other in logical sequence, but a life periodically dividing into entirely separate compartments. Change of surroundings, interests, pursuits, has made it seem actually more like different incarnations.”

YearsMadeDifferentSeemsPastInterestExistenceEventsReflectionFlowPursuitMade ItLogicalSurroundingsSequenceIncarnationRetrospectDividing
Book:The Fabric of Memory
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“One faith, St. Paul writes (Eph. 4:5). Hold most firmly that our faith is identical with that of the ancients. Deny this, and you dissolve the unity of the Church ... We must hold this for certain, namely: that the faith of the people at the present day is one with the faith of the people in past centuries. Were this not true, then we would be in a different church than they were in and, literally, the Church would not be One.”

PeopleWritingDifferentWould BePastCertainChurchCenturyUnityDenyCatholicismIdenticalPresent Day
Author:Thomas Aquinas
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“Historical science is not worse, more restricted, or less capable of achieving firm conclusions because experiment, prediction, and subsumption under invariant laws of nature do not represent its usual working methods. The sciences of history use a different mode of explanation, rooted in the comparative and observational richness in our data. We cannot see a past event directly, but science is usually based on inference, not unvarnished observation (you don't see electrons, gravity, or black holes either).”

DifferentUsePastLawBlackAchieveEventsCapableMethodExperimentsHolesConclusionObservationDataFirmExplanationUsualGravityRootedPredictionsLaws Of NatureRichnessBlack HoleElectronsInferencePast Events
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“Our world is not an optimal place, fine tuned by omnipotent forces of selection. It is a quirky mass of imperfections, working well enough (often admirably); a jury-rigged set of adaptations built of curious parts made available by past histories in different contexts. A world optimally adapted to current environments is a world without history, and a world without history might have been created as we find it. History matters; it confounds perfection and proves that current life transformed its own past.”

WorldWellsHas BeensMadeDifferentMatterEnoughMightPastForceEnvironmentFineProveMassBuiltPerfectionCurrentsAvailableCuriousOur WorldImperfectionTransformedSelectionMight Have BeenAdaptationJuryAdaptedQuirkyOmnipotentRiggedOptimal
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“The Crucible became by far my most frequently produced play, both abroad and at home. Its meaning is somewhat different in different places and moments. I can almost tell what the political situation in a country is when the play is suddenly a hit there it is either a warning of tyranny on the way or a reminder of tyranny just past.”

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Book:The Crucible
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“A different conception of society, very different from that which now prevails, is in process of formation. Under the name of Anarchy, a new interpretation of the past and present life of society arises, giving at the same time a forecast as regards its future, both conceived in the same spirit as the above-mentioned interpretation in natural sciences. Anarchy, therefore, appears as a constituent part of the new philosophy, and that is why Anarchists come in contact, on so many points, with the greatest thinkers and poets of the present day.”

GivingDifferentPhilosophyPastSpiritNamesProcessNaturalPoetRegardAriseContactInterpretationConceptionThinkerAnarchyAnarchismAnarchistFormationPresent DayConstituentsPast And PresentNatural ScienceForecastsPresent Life
Author:Peter Kropotkin
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“In the sixties, the recycling of pop culture turning it into Pop art and camp had its own satirical zest. Now we're into a different kind of recycling. Moviemakers give movies of the past an authority that those movies didn't have; they inflate images that may never have compelled belief, images that were no more than shorthand gestures and they use them not as larger-than-life jokes but as altars.”

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Author:Pauline Kael
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“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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“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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“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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“There is the past and its continuing horrors: violence, war, prejudices against those who are different, outrageous monopolization of the good earth's wealth by a few, political power in the hands of liars and murderers, the building of prisons instead of schools, the poisoning of the press and the entire culture by money. It is easy to become discouraged observing this, especially since this is what the press and television insist that we look at, and nothing more.”

LooksDifferentWarHandsSchoolEarthPastPoliticalCultureEasyWealthViolenceTelevisionBuildingHorrorPrejudicePressesPrisonLiarsContinuingMurdererDiscouragedObservingOutrageousPolitical PowerPoisoningGood Earth
Book:A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present
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“The school was nothing but reminiscence - of an Italian hill town, a French abbey, an English academy, the different sources improbably but convincingly melded into a fantasy about the classic sites of Europe as imagined by exiles from cold peripheral lands, nostalgia about somebody else's past.”

DifferentSchoolPastFantasyLandSourceColdEuropeTownsNostalgiaHillsClassicItalianSiteExileAcademyAbbey
Book:A Boy's Own Story: Picador Classic
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“Today, I will try to remember to regret the past. I will think of how many mistakes I have made throughout my life. I will say to myself, "If only I could go back in time and make different choices, so that my life could be the way it should have been." Then I will remind myself that I cannot.”

IfsThinkingWayShouldTryingHas BeensMadeDifferentTodayPastRememberChoicesMistakeRegretShould HaveShould Have BeenBack In TimeGo Back In TimeDifferent ChoicesPast Regrets
Author:John S. Hall
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“We can learn from history how past generations thought and acted, how they responded to the demands of their time and how they solved their problems. We can learn by analogy, not by example, for our circumstances will always be different than theirs were. The main thing history can teach us is that human actions have consequences and that certain choices, once made, cannot be undone. They foreclose the possibility of making other choices and thus they determine future events.”

HumansMadeDifferentProblemActionPastCertainChoicesKnowledgeTeachGenerationsEventsExamplePossibilityCircumstancesDemandConsequenceClimate ChangeDetermineUndoneAnalogiesHuman ActionsFuture EventsPast GenerationsActions Have Consequences
Book:Why History Matters: Life and Thought
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“Decades have a delusive edge to them. They are not, of course, really periods at all, except as any other ten years may be. But we, looking at them, are caught by the different name each bears, and give them different attributes, and tie labels on them, as if they were flowers in a border.”

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Book:Told by an Idiot
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“When something like this happens, you suddenly have no sense of reality at all. You have lost a piece of your past. The infidelity itself is small potatoes compared to the low-level brain damage that results when a whole chunk of your life turns out to have been completely different from what you thought it was. It becomes impossible to look back at anything that's happened ... without wondering what was really going on.”

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Book:Heartburn
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“Time is different for a tree than for a man. Sun and soil and water, these are the things a weirwood understands, not days and years and centuries. For men, time is a river. We are trapped in its flow, hurtling from past to present, always in the same direction. The lives of trees are different. They root and grow and die in one place, and that river does not move them. The oak is the acorn, the acorn is the oak.”

MenYearsDoeDifferentPastMovingDiesGrowsWaterSunTreeCenturyFlowRiversRootsSoilTrappedOaksAcorns
Book:George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones 5-Book Boxed Set (Song of Ice and Fire Series): A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and and A Dance with Dragons
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