Past Influence Quotes

History is not the past. History is the present. We carry our history with us.

The past is the present, isn't it? It's the future, too. We all try to lie out of that but life won't let us

The past doesn't determine your future unless you carry it with you into the present. Forgiving yourself and others, you free the universe to begin again at any moment.

The past is the present and the future too.

Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.

History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.

Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who ever have been, and ever shall be, animated by the same passions, and thus they necessarily have the same results.

I think history is just so cyclical.

The past is never dead. It’s not even past.

Everything we are is anchored in our childhoods. The drama comes in how we deal with it. Are we slaves to our past, or can we rise above it? This is the stuff of great stories.

The events of future history ... will be of the same nature—–or nearly so—–as the history of the past, so long as men are men.

If the past is not to bind us, where can duty lie? We should have no law but the inclination of the moment.

To be sure, the ancient belief that the dream reveals the future is not entirely devoid of truth. By representing to us a wish as fulfilled the dream certainly leads us into the future; but this future, taken by the dreamer as present, has been formed into the likeness of that past by the indestructible wish.

Why am I the way I am? Well, I used to be different.

Once I had left 'Twin Peaks' and started doing other shows and other movies, I kept running into, 'No, no, we can't do it this way. This is the way it has to happen.' I'm like, 'No. I've already done it, and it worked, so I don't understand what you're saying.'

…everything has a past. Everything – a person, an object, a word, everything. If you don’t know the past, you can’t understand the present and plan properly for the future.

It was for the sake of what had been, rather than what was.

What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past.

This nation’s racial history still casts its long shadow upon us.

When you listen to most of the records that really had an impact on you, they always seem to be from a different era.

The past will find a way to squeeze into the present–if you let it.

Time present and time past / are both perhaps present in time future.

The past has no power over the present moment.

If we are not given the chance to forget, we are also not given the chance to recover our memories, to alter them with time, perspective, and wisdom. Forgetting, we can be ourselves beyond what the past has told us we are; we can evolve. That is the possibility we want from the future.

You cannot escape where you come from, September. Some part of it remains inside you always, like the slender white heart in the center of the thickest onion.