Adlai Stevenson I Quotes

Personal Vision is often the catalyst for wise decisions.

In charting our course to the future, we are mindful of our path from the past.

History is the best guide to the future.

I think in order to move forward into the future, you need to know where you've been.

If you find great difficulty in trying to reckon with the future or even the present, I think it's intuitive to start that process by reckoning with the past.

The past is a rich resource on which we can draw in order to make decisions for the future, but it does not dictate our choices. We should look back at the past and select what is good, and leave behind what is bad.

Paying more heed to the lessons of the past might teach us to be a little more cautious about some of the political decisions taken today.

When I want to understand what is happening today or try to decide what will happen tomorrow, I look back.

The past has to inform the present.

Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.

Once we agree on the future, the present will be much easier. A captain who does not know where he wants to sail, there is no wind on Earth that will bring him there. We have first to decide where we want to go, where we want to sail.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.

I also believe that it is time to begin the fundamental analysis of how we got here, what led us here and what we need to do in order to ensure that we are equipped with the best possible intelligence as we face these issues in the future.

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.

After all, the past is our only real guide to the future, and historical analogies are instruments for distilling and organizing the past and converting it to a map by which we can navigate.

I believe that nothing is more important to our ability to effectively address our present than understanding the lessons learned from those who have come before us.

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

Life is divided into three terms - that which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present, to live better in the future.

If the past is any guide our [current] beliefs will be wrong as our past beliefs have been wrong.

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

History is the single discipline from the world of learning that most informs action in the world. So if you ask world leaders what guides them in making decisions about a new circumstance that they have just encountered it is usually implicitly “a little like this” or “a little like” something else that happened in the past. They use that much more than they use political science theories or economic theories. It is “what is this like that has happened in the past”.

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

Our job is not to predict the future. Rather, it's to suggest all the possible futures - so that society can make informed decisions about where we want to go.

Any decision that I make, anything that I do, every single consideration of my day goes through the prism of what my former experience has been.

The American government must finally learn lessons from the past.