John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes

Even the Gods Can't Change History

There is no way in which we can retrospectively erase the Treaty of Vienna or the Great Irish Famine. It is a peculiar feature of human actions that, once performed, they can never be recuperated. What is true of the past will always be true of it.

I cannot take back one word or action; the past does not change for anyone.

The past can never be erased. It is always going to be there.

'Tis human actions paint the chart of time.

Can one end anything? A chapter, a paragraph, a sentence even? Doesn't everything one has ever done go on living in spite of subsequent events?

Once you consent to some concession, you can never cancel it and put things back the way they are.

Even God cannot change the past.

Making history does not necessarily change history.

We don’t get to replay history.

You can't go back and alter the past.

There is no rewind button for life.

The Middle Ages hangs over history's belt like a beer belly. It is too late now for aerobic dancing or cottage cheese lunches to reduce the Middle Ages. History will have to wear size 48 shorts forever.

History is an omlette. THe eggs are already broken.

What I've done in the past is history and what I'm gonna do in the future is a mystery

I am interested in the past. Perhaps one of the reasons is we cannot make, cannot change the past. I mean you can hardly unmake the present. But the past after all is merely to say a memory, a dream. You know my own past seems continually changed when I am remembering it, or reading things that are interesting to me.

What is done cannot be now amended.

One thing alone not even God can do,To make undone whatever hath been done.

Everything is imprinted for ever with what it once was.

It's not about knowing who you are. It's about thinkin you got there without takin anything with you. Your notions about startin over. or anybody's. You dont start over. That's what it's about. Every step you take is forever. You can't make it go away. None of it.

It is hard to have patience with people who say 'There is no death' or 'Death doesn't matter.' There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn't matter.

When the honey's out of the comb, there's no putting it back.

I know I cannot undo this. None of us can undo what we’ve done, or relive a life already recorded.

I can't. You can't rewrite the past.

Today, I don't believe in destiny. But I do believe in history...There's nothing more powerful than history.