Past Quotes | Beyond Motive

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Past Quotes

"When I left prison, I had to figure out how to embrace my past."

Fernando Flores, Chilean Politician

8

"We make too much of that long groan which underlines the past."

Derek Walcott, Trinidadian Playwright

4

"It should be clear to all, after the past ten years, that NATO isn't attacking Serbia because of Milosevic; it is attacking Milosevic because of Serbia."

Slobodan Milosevic, Yugoslavian Criminal

2

"I have had many opportunities to visit universities all over the world in the past 50 years."

John Pople, English Scientist

Past, Visit, World, Years

1

"Bobby and I have been to various reunions of Our Gang. We've been to like three or four reunions over the past 15 years or so. We were at one in Palm Springs, California."

Tommy Bond, American Actor

"I was at my best at a little past forty, when I was a professor at Oxford."

Godfrey Harold Hardy, British Mathematician

"A novel is a static thing that one moves through; a play is a dynamic thing that moves past one."

Kenneth Tynan, English Critic

"The past cannot be cured."

Elizabeth I, English Royalty

"The only thing to prevent what's past is to put a stop to it before it happens."

Boyle Roche, Irish Politician

"I was always attracted to the past as a kid."

Stanley Tucci, American Actor

"The past always looks better than it was. It's only pleasant because it isn't here."

Finley Peter Dunne, American Journalist

"As we get past our superficial material wants and instant gratification we connect to a deeper part of ourselves, as well as to others, and the universe."

Judith Wright, Australian Poet

"Our greatest responsibility is not to be pencils of the past."

Robert A. M. Stern, American Architect

Past, Responsibility

"Creeds and castes, and all forms of intellectual and emotional grouping, belong to the past."

Herbert Read, English Poet

"The past is a great place and I don't want to erase it or to regret it, but I don't want to be its prisoner either."

Mick Jagger, English Musician

Past, Regret, Want

"I don't want to be disrespectful of the president of the United States, but as a political person, one of the things I appreciated about this president, in the past year especially, is he is a fantastic candidate."

Ed Gillespie, American Politician

Past, President, States, United

"I don't think you can run around and crash and bang quite the way that I might have done in the past."

Eric Lindros, Canadian Athlete

"Schumacher wouldn't have let him past voluntarily. Of course he did it voluntarily, but he had to do it."

Murray Walker, English Entertainer

"There is no prodigy in our profession. If you see all the great singer of the past, none of them are."

Luciano Pavarotti, Italian Musician

Past, Profession

"Never revisit the past, that's dangerous. You know, move on."

Robert Redford, American Actor

"If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past."

Baruch Spinoza, Dutch Philosopher

Past, Present, Study, Want

"There isn't a dearth of it, but I will confess that it's harder for me to find songs on which I'm willing to invest anything from ten to fifteen hours writing an arrangement than it was in times past."

Mel Torme, American Musician

Past, Songs, Will, Writing

"Past is aipsom if you learned from the past."

Debasish Mridha, American Author

Past, Learning, Growth, Reflection

"Some years I'm the coolest thing that ever happened, and then the next year everyone's so over me, and I'm just so past my sell date."

Cher, American Musician

"As you know, in the past several years, month after month, radio has increased its revenues - some of it even coming from Dot-Com advertisers. So, radio is a survivor."

Casey Kasem, American Broadcaster

"Not to be born is, past all prizing, best."

Sophocles, Greek Poet

"It was really a pleasure to play someone who's literally pushed past her breaking point repeatedly."

Jeri Ryan, American Actress

Past, Play, Pleasure

"You can't undo the past... but you can certainly not repeat it."

Bruce Willis, American Actor

"Pursuing employment or climatic relief, we live in voluntary exile from our extended families and our longer past, but in an involuntary exile from ourselves and our own past."

John Thorn, American Historian

"I do like to drive fast and I have gotten pulled over in the past. I use my skills to get out of tickets."

Josie Maran, American Model

"We need not destroy the past. It is gone."

John Cage, American Composer

"It's been dawning on me slowly that for the past 35 years I have been cast against type, and I'm finally getting to do what I really wanted to do."

Leslie Nielsen, Canadian Actor

"I don't want to live on past records."

Barry Gibb, English Musician

"The West is dead... you may lose a sweetheart but you won't forget her."

Charles M. Russell, American Artist

Past, Forget, May

"Rock and Roll has certainly tried to take its toll on me. I'd rather not talk about my past excesses here, although some hardcore rockers might argue that those excesses were responsible for some great records, but I know which side I came out on."

Tony Visconti, American Musician

"The past is only the present become invisible and mute; and because it is invisible and mute, its memorized glances and its murmurs are infinitely precious. We are tomorrow's past."

Mary Webb, English Novelist

Past, Present, Tomorrow

"Saddam Hussein has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do."

Henry Waxman, American Politician

Past, Resolution, Weapons, Years

"Those who try to obliterate the past are injuring the present."

Helen Dunmore, British Poet

"We saw hundreds of programs to redevelop the central city, the neighborhoods, in the past."

Jane Byrne, American Politician

"The other inmates stand in a long straight line, flanked by guards, and I am dragged past them. I do not respect them, because they will not run - will not try to escape."

Jack Henry Abbott, American Author

Past, Respect, Will

"I'm not an historian but I can get interested - obsessively interested - with any aspect of the past, whether it's palaeontology or archaeology or the very recent past."

Penelope Lively, English Author

"What happened in the past is just that, the past. Champion or not."

Steve Nash, Canadian Athlete

"Happy is the person who cherishes the precious lessons of the past and lives vigorously in the present."

Jerome Hines, American Musician

"In the past, so many of my records, really, have been sketches for records that never really got made."

Robert Wyatt, English Musician

"Out of the past come the standards for judging the present; standards in turn to be shaped by the practice of present-day dramatists into broader standards for the next generation."

George P. Baker, American Theorist

Past, Practice, Present

"If you go too soon, you can come unstuck with 50m left when the guys are going past you."

Michael East, American Athlete

"One of my resolutions is to quit smoking. I've tried for the past two years, but this year I am going to stick with it."

John Oldham, American Celebrity

Past, Smoking, Years

"One does not substitute oneself for the past, one merely adds to it a new link."

Paul Cezanne, French Artist

"It has become much more difficult to smuggle dangerous substances across our borders over the past three years, and this is creating real problems for drug traffickers."

John Walters, British Musician

Past, Problems, Years

"The discontented believe that their regrets are about the past."

Mason Cooley, American Writer

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