Steve Earle Quotes

The Past: Our cradle, not our prison; there is danger as well as appeal in its glamour. The past is for inspiration, not imitation, for continuation, not repetition.

The past is what provides us with the building blocks. Our job today is to create new buildings out of them.

Building the future holds more attraction than ancestor worship, whichever ancestor we're talking about.

We have to go into the past to go further and further into the future.

We can't look for greatness in the past.

We always build on the past; the past always tries to stop us.

We need the rock of the past under our feet in order to spring forward into the future.

We make the future better than the past. We don't hide from history. We make history.

Whatever worked in the past, build on it; whatever didn't work in the past, break the chain that binds you to it.

Anything is better than stagnation.

The cradle of the future is the grave of the past.

Each generation goes further than the generation preceding it because it stands on the shoulders of that generation. You will have opportunities beyond anything we've ever known.

I am not interested in the past, except as the road to the future.

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

One must always maintain one's connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it.

So this anchoring in some way, in some important way in the past without repeating the past, but on the basis of the past building something new: that is what is important.

Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.

Slumber not in the tents of your fathers. The world is advancing.

I am connected to the past in a way that keeps me going forward. Every leap forward that I make is by reaching back and firmly getting a footing in the past, and pushing forward as hard as I can.

I believe in the old, because it shows us where we come from - where our souls have risen from. And I believe in the new, because it gives us the opportunity to create who we are becoming.

I am not nostalgic about things. When you have a kind of improvement, I am not nostalgic about the past.

Something that has been important to me is never to repeat myself, never to go back.

Many people repeat the past. I'm not interested. I prefer evolution.

As far as it growing, I believe it is always necessary to evolve. I am not one to rest on my laurels.