Noam Chomsky Quotes

If history is any indication, all truths will eventually turn out to be false.

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

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

The future is unknowable, but the past may give us hope.

Falsehoods which we spurn to-day Were the truths of long ago.

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

We can be almost certain of being wrong about the future, if we are wrong about the past.

Even the best of us are thrown off some- times.

Even the best intentions turn around one day... Nobody's right all the time.

It is not well to go into things long past, unless to learn something for our present guidance.

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

Ancient histories provide windows to knowing current affairs.

In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these

Amid the pressure of world events, neither a general principle nor the remembrance of similar circumstances is of any help .... Something like pale recollection has no power against the vitality and freedom of the present

Each century believes its fight to be weightier than that of all others preceding it.

You cannot rely upon what you have been taught. All you have learned from history is old ways of making mistakes. There is nothing that history can tell you about what we must do tomorrow. Only what we must not do.

Historical analogy is the last refuge of people who can't grasp the current situation.

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past

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

If you make enough decisions in life, you’re bound to make some of them wrong.

It is not only by the questions we have answered that progress may be measured, but also by those we are still asking. The passionate controversies of one era are viewed as sterile preoccupations by another, for knowledge alters what we seek as well as what we find.

We ought not to look back, unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dear bought experience.

Trying to recreate for people the ways in which the past was similar to the present is an important part of what a historian has to do, and what a student of foreign policy has to do.

No single conflict from the past can serve as a reliable model for struggles in the present.

Each day has its own destiny. Yesterday is history, today is opportunity while tomorrow is mystery.