Bahaullah Quotes

Everything changes.

Is it not the glory of the people of America, that, whilst they have paid a decent respect to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense.

Liberalism is the philosophy for our time, because it does not try to conserve every tradition of the past, because it does not apply to new problems the old doctrinaire solutions, because it is prepared to experiment and innovate and because it knows that the past is less important than the future.

We need to open up the future. We also need to keep everything valuable from the past.

We should all be involved in the avant-garde as long as we look toward the past.

It would be naive to think that the problems plaguing mankind today can be solved with means and methods which were applied or seemed to work in the past.

If you think about the actual problems we are facing - all the crises - we have the means to solve these crises. The past has shown us we are able to do things we never imagined we would be able to do.

Success follows those adept at preserving the substance of the past by clothing it in the forms of the future.

Being an American is a state of mind, and to be in a family is to feel the power of belonging, the power of your roots. Family is a tree, the strength of a tree, the roots, the leaves, the past and the present, the future, the fruits, the seeds.

The standards of the past are not the standards of the future.

Every era demands its own answers, and if one wants to do good, one must be prepared for them.

The young business and professional men of this country must get together round the table, adopt methods that have proved sound in the past, adapt them to the changing needs of the times and, whenever possible, improve them.

That was then. This is now.

The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present.

There are no simple solutions to today’s problems.

The present generation has the same right of self-government which the past one has exercised for itself.

The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the opinions of man change also; and as government is for the living, and not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it.

Defending yesterday … is far more risky than making tomorrow.

What is today supported by precedents will hereafter become a precedent.

The American Dream can no more remain static than can the American nation.... We cannot any longer take an old approach to world problems. They aren't the same problems. It isn't the same world. We must not adopt the methods of our ancestors; instead, we must emulate that pioneer quality in our ancestors that made them attempt new methods for a New World.

What was good enough for my father is good enough for me" is a treasured English axiom which, if strictly carried out, would have kept us to wooden ploughs and water clocks. In these days we need to be inoculated with some of the nervous energy of the Americans.

We may make progress only by freeing ourselves from the rut of the past, but without this rut an orderly society would hardly be possible in the first place.

They [the Founding Fathers] recognized fully the value of tradition and habit as the great allies of permanence and stability.

You can't allow tradition to get in the way of innovation. There's a need to respect the past, but it's a mistake to revere your past.

I want to make sure that that future that we're creating is one that is the best it can be for people around the world, and also one that includes the full range of our talent and our skills - and, you know, gender and ethnicity, geography - to solving the world's problems.