Israel Zangwill Quotes

The idea that somehow the way forward is to abandon the past, to me, is preposterous and both undesirable and unrealistic.

Every leap forward that I make is by reaching back and firmly getting a footing in the past, and pushing forward as hard as I can.

The past is our definition. We may strive with good reason to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it. But we will escape it only by adding something better to it.

One must always maintain one's connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it.

You can't live in history. You've got to build for the future.

So this anchoring in some way, in some important way in the past without repeating the past, but on the basis of the past building something new: that is what is important.

We can't look for greatness in the past.

For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.

I can understand when people copy people of the past and make the future their own.

One does not substitute oneself for the past, one merely adds to it a new link.

I am not interested in the past, except as the road to the future.

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.

Of course I'm proud of what I've done, but I'm interested in what's next. I want to be relevant now, in 2012. I've done my bit for the past. I've only ever been about what's next, really, and I'll be that way until I keel over.

History isn’t just what happened before we came on the scene. We are a part of history..

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

We have to go into the past to go further and further into the future.

The Past is to be respected and acknowledged, but not to be worshipped. It is our future in which we will find our greatness.

Too much we have lived in our history. We must live in the future.

The past should have a vote but not a veto.

Many people repeat the past. I'm not interested. I prefer evolution.

Tradition matters. To me it's not a limiting force; it's a springboard.

The past can influence the future. When you finish one chapter, you open another, which will be influenced by what you've just lived through.

We can't be beholden to the past.

I'm not going to the past, and it's not tied to me, every time moving forward, and this is more important - to move forward every time.

We don't want to live in the past; we want to go into the future.