Patrick Henry Quotes

The best prophet of the future is the past.

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

If we open a quarrel between the present and the past, we shall be in danger of losing our future.

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

In charting our course to the future, we are mindful of our path from the past.

Paying more heed to the lessons of the past might teach us to be a little more cautious about some of the political decisions taken today.

An accurate knowledge of the past of a country is necessary for everyone who would understand its present, and who desires to judge of its future.

The past has to inform the present.

History is the best guide to the future.

After all, the past is our only real guide to the future, and historical analogies are instruments for distilling and organizing the past and converting it to a map by which we can navigate.

Study the past, if you would divine the future.

History shows you prospects by starlight, or at best by the waning moon.

History is the single discipline from the world of learning that most informs action in the world. So if you ask world leaders what guides them in making decisions about a new circumstance that they have just encountered it is usually implicitly “a little like this” or “a little like” something else that happened in the past. They use that much more than they use political science theories or economic theories. It is “what is this like that has happened in the past”.

Like most of those who study history, he (Napoleon III) learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones.

We can chart our future clearly and wisely only when we know the path which has led to the present.

A healthy vision of the future is not possible without an accurate knowledge of the past.

I think seeing some of the past can be helpful, especially if you're into crime solving.

I think history is continuous. It doesn't begin or end on Pearl Harbor Day or the day Lyndon Johnson withdraws from the presidency or on 9/11. You have to learn from the past but not be imprisoned by it. You need to take counsel of history but never be imprisoned by it.

There are certain moments when we might wish the future were built by men of the past.

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

Half of my library are old books because I like seeing how people thought about their world at their time. So that I don't get bigheaded about something we just discovered and I can be humble about where we might go next. Because you can see who got stuff right and most of the people who got stuff wrong.

The past is a stronger influence in the South. But I think everywhere you have this sense that the world changes faster than you can accommodate yourself to. Looking back and seeing how you got where you are is a useful way to combat disorientation.

I believe that nothing is more important to our ability to effectively address our present than understanding the lessons learned from those who have come before us.

Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.

Sometimes it takes looking at the past to really be able to move forward and learn from it.