Sigmund Freud Quotes

We are often wrong about the past, but at least with the past you can change your thinking. We can't do that with the future.

Everything is too far away in the past, or mysteriously too close.

I mentioned that one of the tripartite formulas in American worldview involves time: past, present, and future.

As you get further away from a presidency you are better able to assess that presidency.

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

I see things about the present more clearly when I'm looking through the frame of the past: I think it's very hard to assess the present moment that we are in.

No one can lose either the past or the future - how could anyone be deprived of what he does not possess? ... It is only the present moment of which either stands to be deprived: and if this is all he has, he cannot lose what he does not have.

We think very little of time present; we anticipate the future, as being too slow, and with a view to hasten it onward, we recall the past to stay it as too swiftly gone. We are so thoughtless, that we thus wander through the hours which are not here, regardless only of the moment that is actually our own.

The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground; for it is the past, and it is the future.

These tenses-past, present and future-are not the tenses of time; they are tenses of the mind. That which is no longer before the mind becomes the past. That which is before the mind is the present. And that which is going to be before the mind is the future. Past is that which is no longer before you. Future is that which is not yet before you. And present is that which is before you and is slipping out of your sight. Soon it will be past.

Remember that even if you were to live for three thousand years, or thirty thousand, you could not lose any other life than the one you have, and there will be no other life after it. So the longest and the shortest lives are the same. The present moment is shared by all living creatures, but the time that is past is gone forever. No one can lose the past or the future, for if they don't belong to you, how can they be taken from you?

Sometimes I think I live more closely to the past than the present.

The past feels distant, even when it's near. The future feels assured, even when it isn't.

You can only understand the present age when it is past.

You ask me about the past, you ask me about the future, the only way to be happy is to be living right now.

One good thing about the past is that you can't change it. So there's no reason to go back. It's there. It is what it is. The only thing you can change is right now and what's happening next.

We live in the moment. We're not thinking about the future right now. We're not thinking about the past, you know. We're living in this moment right here and it's a sweet moment to live in.

History is a river that never ends. Today is history, and I am here at the fountainhead.

Memory creates a hallucination of the past, desire creates a hallucination of the future.

The past is over; the present is fleeting; we live in the future.

You and I are standing this very second at the meeting place of two eternities: the vast past that has endured forever, and the future that is plunging on to the last syllable of recorded time. We can't possible live in either of those eternities - no, not even for a split second. But, by trying to do so, we can wreck both our bodies and our minds. So let's be content to live the only time we can possible live: from now until bedtime.

No thought about the past or future can pull you away from your present peace and joy. The universe exists in this present moment. No desire can pull you away from this present peace, not even the desire to become a Buddha or the desire to save all beings. Know that to become a Buddha and to save all beings can only be realized on the foundation of the pure peace of the present moment.

Distance... is like futurity. A dim vastness is spread before our souls; the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision... But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant 'there' becomes the present 'here,' all is changed; we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness.

Today, we don't talk about history. The past is two weeks ago, and the future is two weeks after.

I write a lot about the past because I really see things clearly in hindsight.