James Connolly Quotes

If we understand the past, we are more likely to recognise what is happening around us.

Each age tries to form its own conception of the past. Each age writes the history of the past anew with reference to the conditions uppermost in its own time.

The history of the past interests us only in so far as it illuminates the history of the present.

Study the past, if you would divine the future.

Ancient histories provide windows to knowing current affairs.

It would be well if, in studying the past, we could always bear in mind the problems of the present

The most reliable way to forecast the future is to try to understand the present.

The best way to predict the future is to study the past, or prognosticate.

I know of no way of judging the future but by the past.

[Addressing Thomas Jefferson:] Your taste is judicious in liking better the dreams of the future than the history of the past.

We are products of the past and its useful to remember that as we move into the future.

I don't think you learn specific lessons from history, but you do learn proportion.

The careful study of the past enlarges our foresight in contemporary affairs and affords to citizens and to monarchs lessons of incitement or warning in the ordering of public policy

The present enables us to understand the past, not the other way round.

The further backward we look, the further forward we are likely to see.

The only danger of knowing and thinking a lot about history, is that you will trip on something behind you. Be sure you also look ahead.

Presidents look back seeking both inspiration for the future and sanction for the moment

I see things about the present more clearly when I'm looking through the frame of the past: I think it's very hard to assess the present moment that we are in.

I hope my journals relating to World War II will help clarify issues of the past and thereby contribute to understanding the issues and conditions of the present and future.

It's hard to understand a moment in history when you are in it.

All history must be mobilized if one would understand the present.

Understanding the past requires pretending that you don't know the present.

History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.

For the first time in the history of mankind, one generation literally has the power to destroy the past, the present and the future, the power to bring time to an end.

History is always changing.