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Past Quotes

“It is always the sign of the second-rate man when the decision merely meets the present situation. It is the left-over in a decision which gives it its greatest value. It is the carry-over in the decision which helps develop the situation in the way we wish it to be developed. The ablest administrators do not merely draw logical conclusions from the array of facts of the past which their expert assistants bring to them; they have a vision of the future.”

Source: Dynamic administration: the collected papers of Mary Parker Follett

“Even when men approve of the same arrangements, it must be asked whether they approve of them because they exist or because they are desirable in themselves. The common resistance to the collectivist tide should not be allowed to obscure the fact that the belief in integral freedom is based on an essentially forward-looking attitude and not on any nostalgic longing for the past or a romantic admiration for what has been.”

Men Should Has Beens Facts Past Belief Common Attitude Longing Resistance Admiration Tides Arrangements Obscure Desirable Nostalgic

Author:Friedrich August von Hayek

“when Christian theology becomes traditionalism and men fail to hold and use it as they do a living language, it becomes an obstacle, not a help to religious conviction. To the greatest of the early Fathers and the great scholastics theology was a language which, like all language, had a grammar and a vocabulary from the past, but which they used to express all the knowledge and experience of their own time as well.”

“I think it's tremendously important that women continue to be full participants in the corporate environment, and that they continue to seek the same responsibilities, opportunities and rewards in that environment that in the past have only been available to men.”

Thinking Men Important Past Opportunity Responsibility Environment Rewards Available Corporate Participants

Author:Betty Friedan

“From youth to middle, and often to past middle, age, most men are apt to be too closely engaged in the struggle of life to pay due attention to the strength of the body. They may take daily what they consider a sufficient amount of exercise; but the exercise is not calculated to keep the various limbs and muscles, still less the internal organs, in proper working order. Amid the ordinary concerns of life the man may appear strong, even stalwart. But when occasion arises for some special muscular exercise, or taxing the action of some organ, he finds out his weakness.”

“In appointing our Ambassador to the United States at this important time, with the 1936 crisis ahead, such considerations as dignity, past career, equity and sentiment must be discarded and a man of ability chosen in the interests of the country. In the light of these considerations, we find Hiroshi Saito, present Minister of Holland, the right person for the post.”

“In the past few months, I've become convinced of one thing: If I were a man, I'd be paid more.”

Ifs Men Past One Thing Months Paid Convinced

Author:Judy Greer

“Once a man's will is set, he need no longer rely on others or expect anything from the world. His vision encompasses Heaven and earth, past and present, and the tranquility of his heart is undisturbed.”

Men World Needs Heart Earth Past Heaven Vision Rely Tranquility Heaven And Earth Past And Present

Author:Yoshida Shoin

“All other great men are valued for their lives; He, above all, for His death, around which mercy and truth, righteousness and peace, God and man are reconciled; for the cross is the magnet which sends the electric current through the telegraph between earth and heaven, and makes both Testaments thrill, through the ages of the past and future, with living, harmonious, and saving truth.”

Men Age Earth Past Heaven Crosses Mercy Currents Saving Great Men Righteousness Electric Testament Thrill Harmonious Magnet Telegraph Electric Current

Book:Evidences of Revealed Religion

Source: Evidences of Revealed Religion

“I also believe - and hope - that politics and economics will cease to be as important in the future as they have been in the past; the time will come when most of our present controversies on these matters will seem as trivial, or as meaningless, as the theological debates in which the keenest minds of the Middle Ages dissipated their energies. Politics and economics are concerned with power and wealth, neither of which should be the primary, still less the exclusive, concern of full-grown men.”

“No man who is correctly informed as to the past will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present.”

Men Past Views Morose

Author:Thomas B. Macaulay

“Aestheticism and radicalism must lead us to jettison reason, and to replace it by a desperate hope for political miracles. This irrational attitude which springs from intoxication with dreams of a beautiful world is what I call Romanticism. It may seek its heavenly city in the past or in the future; it may preach 'back to nature' or 'forward to a world of love and beauty'; but its appeal is always to our emotions rather than to reason. Even with the best intentions of making heaven on earth it only succeeds in making it a hell - that hell which man alone prepares for his fellow-men.”

Source: The Open Society and Its Enemies

“Yet, every now and then, there would pass a young girl, slender, fair and desirable, arousing in young men a not ignoble desire to possess her, and stirring in old men regrets for ecstasy not seized and now forever past.”

Men Past Young Desire Girl Forever Regret Fairs Young Man Old Man Ecstasy Now And Then Desirable Stirring Slender Ignoble

Author:Anatole France

“It was part of war; men died, more would die, that was past, and what mattered now was the business in hand; those who lived would get on with it. Whatever sorrow was felt, there was no point in talking or brooding about it, much less in making, for form's sake, a parade of it. Better and healthier to forget it, and look to tomorrow.The celebrated British stiff upper lip, the resolve to conceal emotion which is not only embarrassing and useless, but harmful, is just plain commons sense”

“It is not for man to seek, or even to believe in, God. He only has to refuse his ultimate love to everything that is not God. This refusal does not presuppose any belief. It is enough to recognize what is obvious to any mind: that all the goods of this world, past, present, and future, real or imaginary, are finite and limited and radically incapable of satisfying the desire that perpetually burns within us for an infinite and perfect good.”

“The world may disagree with the Church, but the world knows very definitely with what it is disagreeing. In the future as in the past, the Church will be intolerant about the sanctity of marriage, for what God has joined together no man shall put asunder; she will be intolerant about her creed, and be ready to die for it, for she fears not those who kill the body, but rather those who have the power to cast body and soul into hell.”

Knows Men World May Soul Body Together Past Dies Church Hell Ready Casts Disagree Creeds Fear Not Sanctity Ready To Die Sanctity Of Marriage

Author:Fulton J. Sheen

“Job 29 is about Job reflecting on his past before the calamity hit him to say this is the type of man I was. So, you want to know what God calls perfect and upright? Read Job 29, and you will understand what kind of man God esteems.”

Knows Men Want Kind Jobs Past Perfect Type Esteem Calamity Reflecting

Author:Eric Ludy

“Music is like a river or stream that has come down to us through time, bringing nurture to man's soul. From the past masters, this music flowed to my father and through him to me. I want to keep this stream flowing. I don't want it to die. It must spread all over the world.”

Men World Want Soul Past Dies Father Masters Music Is Rivers Spread Streams Nurture Rough Times

Author:Ali Akbar Khan

“As an American man of the 1990s writing about a Japanese woman of the 1930s, I needed to cross three cultural divides - man to woman, American to Japanese, and present to past.”

Men Writing Past Three Needed Crosses Divides 1930s

Author:Arthur Golden

“I absolutely believe the past had its share of warrior women who fought like men. Whether some of these were the actual Amazons from Greek myth is another matter.”

Men Believe Matter Past Share Myth Warrior Greek Greek Myth

Author:Anne Fortier

“Something deathless and dangerous in the world sweeps past you...It is something fearful and ominous, something turbulent and to be dreaded, which distends the drama to include the life of nations as well as of men. It is an ageless warning.”

Men World Wells Past Nations Dangerous Drama Warning Fearful Ominous Deathless Ageless

Author:John Mason Brown

“First, the constitution ought to secure a genuine and guard against a select militia, by providing that the militia shall always be kept well organized, armed, and disciplined, and include, according to the past and general usuage of the states, all men capable of bearing arms; and that all regulations tending to render this general militia useless and defenceless, by establishing select corps of militia, or distinct bodies of military men, not having permanent interests and attachments in the community to be avoided.”

“As I said just now, the world has gone past me. I don't blame it; but I no longer understand it. Tradesmen are not the same as they used to be, apprentices are not the same, business is not the same, business commodities are not the same. Seven-eighths of my stock is old-fashioned. I am an old-fashioned man in an old-fashioned shop, in a street that is not the same as I remember it. I have fallen behind the time, and am too old to catch it again.”

Source: Charles Dickens's works. Charles Dickens ed. [18 vols. of a 21 vol. set. Wanting A child's history of England; Christmas stories; The mystery of Edwin Drood].

“Recollections of the past and visions of the present come to bear me company; the meanest man to whom I have ever given alms appears, to add his mite of peace and comfort to my stock; and whenever the fire within me shall grow cold, to light my path upon this earth no more, I pray that it may be at such an hour as this, and when I love the world as well as I do now.”

Source: CHARLES DICKENS – The Complete Short Stories: 190+ Christmas Tales, Social Sketches, Tales for Children & Other Stories (Illustrated): A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, The Battle of Life, The Haunted Man, Sketches by Boz, Mudfog Papers, Reprinted Pieces, Pearl-Fishing, Christmas Stories, Child's Dream of a Star, Holiday Romance…

“From the example of the past, the man of the present acts prudently so as not to imperil the future.”

Men Past Example He Man

Author:Titian

“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.”

Source: 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

“All over the world, particularly in the newer nations, young men are coming to power--men who are not bound by the traditions of the past--men who are not blinded by the old fears and hates and rivalries-- young men who can cast off the old slogans and delusions and suspicions.”

Men World Past Young Hate Nations Generations Tradition Bounds Casts Young Man Delusion Suspicion Slogans Blinded Rivalry Power Man

Author:John F. Kennedy

“Religion grows with the intelligence of man, but all religions of the past and probably all of the future will sooner or later become petrified forms instead of living helps to mankind. Until that time comes, however, if religion of any name or nature makes man more happy, comfortable, and able to live peaceably with his brothers, it is good.”

Ifs Men Helping Able Past Form Names Grows Atheism Mankind Brother Comfortable Positive Atheism Sooner Or Later

Author:Luther Burbank

“Since men do not really respect anything unless it was established long ago and has developed slowly over time, those who want tokeep on living after their death must take worry not only about their future generations but even more about their past: that is why tyrants of all kinds (including tyrannical artists and politicians) like to do violence to history, so that it will appear as a preparation and stepladder to themselves.”

Men Want Kind Long Past Artist Worry Violence Generations Politician Including All Kinds Preparation Tyrants Long Ago Future Generation

Author:Friedrich Nietzsche

“Why should the imagination of a man Long past his prime remember things that are Emblematical of love and war?”

Men Should Long War Past Remember Imagination Prime Love And War

Book:The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats

Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats

“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men's reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”

Source: Occasions and protests

“A sleeping man holds in a circle around him the thread of the hours, the order of years and of worlds. He consults them instinctively upon awaking and in one second reads in them the point of the earth that he occupies, the time past until his arousal; but their ranks can be mingled or broken.”

Men World Years Earth Past Time Order Hours Sleep Broken Circles Thread Arousal Times Past

Author:Marcel Proust