Natalie Goldberg Quotes

I desire no future that will break the ties with the past.

You can't build a future if you don't have a past.

People who have gone, are still here, in us. Places we came from, are carried to the places we go.

In my view, you can't go to the future if you haven't come from the past.

In search of my mother's garden, I found my own.

Israel is my past. My two boys are my future.

I am the family face; flesh perishes, I live on.

I have not lived so abundantly, full of family, full of continuity and history.

You always want to know what happened before you. It's a human instinct to know where you came from and what preceded you.

Racism is earthbound - it's something we only do to each other here on earth. Legacy, on the other hand, is otherworldly. It pushes us forward to our future.

Nothing I'm doing is without its predecessors.

The seeds of the past bear fruit in the present.

Without a past you can't have a future.

We never leave our roots. We just grow new branches.

There's a part of me that thinks perhaps we go on existing in a place even after we've left it.

Books should be cherished, like children, books are for the next generation, like children, like history.

Even if we no longer have much in common, we would have always had the past, which, in some ways, is just as important as the present or future. It is where we come from, what makes us who we are.

What you have inherited from your forefathers, it takes work to make it your own.

We are a part of everything that is beneath us, above us, and around us. Our past is our present, our present is our future, and our future is seven generations past and present.

Let us contemplate our forefathers, and posterity, and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter.

Creeds, like other goods, pass by inheritance to descendants.

For the future. For the unborn.

If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people.

People should make a stand for the things they love and want to see survive infinite generations.

We are not separate and independent entities, but like links in a chain, and we could not by any means be what we are without those who went before us and showed us the way.