Thomas Babington Macaulay Quotes

The old always think the world is getting worse; it is for the young, equipped with historical facts, to point out that, compared with 1509, or even 1939, life in 2009 is sweet as honey.

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

Two things have always been true about human beings. One, the world is always getting better. Two, the people living at that time think it's getting worse.

One thing we have lost, that we had in the past, is a sense of progress, that things are getting better. There is a sense of volatility, but not of progress.

I only know from my own personal experience, and I personally feel that there's a cyclical nature to things, so you don't want to start making generalizations about how bad things have become in comparison to the old days.

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

A lot of times we look at the past as something that was really great, but we ignore things that have actually gotten better since then.

Have you ever heard one civilized person whose opinion you respect, at any time, anywhere, in any civilized country anywhere, say the good new days?

The past is the place we view the present from as much as the other way around.

The story and study of the past, both recent and distant, will not reveal the future, but it flashes beacon lights along the way and it is a useful nostrum against despair.

I love history. It was the only thing I did well at in school. I'm not ashamed to admit that I was not a good student but I was great at history.

We are never as modern, as far ahead of the past as we like to think we are.

Knowledge of the past and an optimistic view of the present give you great opportunities.

I believe in optimism of the will, pessimism of the intellect. But my hope is the people, the society, which is ahead of the government.

Historical knowledge is indispensable for those who want to build a better world

Pessimism is a very easy way out because it is a short view of life. If you look at what is happening around us today, you can't help but feel that life is a terrible complexity of problems. But if you look back a few thousand years, you realize that we have advanced fantastically. If you take a long view, I do not see how you can be pessimistic about the future of mankind.

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

We yearn for tomorrow and the progress that it represents. But yesterday was once tomorrow, and where was progress in it? Or we yearn for yesterday, for what was or what might have been. But as we are yearning, the present is becoming the past, so the past is nothing but our yearning for second chances.

I don't want to be a pessimist. I'm a realist. One man's realist is another man's pessimist.

I think the role of artists in the past was very different. Artists had less responsibility in many ways.

There is nothing to be learned from history anymore. We're in science fiction now.

To look back to antiquity is one thing, to go back to it is another.

It is horrible to see everything that one detested in the past coming back wearing the colors of the future.

Past and to come, seems best; things present, worse.