Jean Rostand Quotes

I don't feel the depression the people who are always looking back to the '50s, to 'Father Knows Best' feel. I can see the coming of another glorious era.

Conservatism cherishes tradition; innovation fetishizes novelty. They tug in different directions, the one toward the past, the other toward the future.

Traditionalists are pessimists about the future and optimists about the past.

It is not possible to go forward while looking back.

The past is a source of knowledge, and the future is a source of hope. Love of the past implies faith in the future.

It's a question of whether we're going to go forward into the future, or past to the back.

We are tomorrow's past.

People say, oh it's a shame, you're not nostalgic about the '60s. Well actually, it's quite good, when you think of it. Wouldn't it be sad if I was sitting here wishing it back?

The social revolution of the nineteenth century can not draw its poetry from the past, it can draw that only from the future.

Events have moved on, yet some people still keep talking about the past.

… we should not indulge in looking backwards with envy to the past, but to keep our eyes ahead of us with hope for the future.

What makes Progressives is their confidence in Progress.

Going back to the past is not productive.

A lot of people are really hung on the past - they can't get past that - but you've gotta get past that if you want any future.

Chasing after the past is not going to lead you to the future you want.

My generation, we're so smart and opinionated, and we know the world we want to live in; we know the future we want. We're such a liberal, forward-thinking generation that's been held back by an older generation that doesn't understand it, doesn't want the world to progress quickly because of old ideologies.

Why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe?

Nothing is ever behind us.

some things are better off back in the past. Where they belong.

The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change; Then let it come: I have no dread of what Is called for by the instinct of mankind. Nor think I that God's world would fall apart Because we tear a parchment more or less. Truth is eternal, but her effluence, With endless change, is fitted to the hour; Her mirror is turned forward, to reflect The promise of the future, not the past. I do not fear to follow out the truth.

Even when men approve of the same arrangements, it must be asked whether they approve of them because they exist or because they are desirable in themselves. The common resistance to the collectivist tide should not be allowed to obscure the fact that the belief in integral freedom is based on an essentially forward-looking attitude and not on any nostalgic longing for the past or a romantic admiration for what has been.

The 21st century will not be about the battle between capitalism and socialism but between the forces of progress and the forces of conservatism.

When I stop learning something new and start talking about the past versus the future, I will go.

To look back into the past only makes sense if it serves the future.

There is no present or future-only the past, happening over and over again-now.