Past Wisdom Quotes

There have been many men who left behind them that which hundreds of years have not worn out. The earth has Socrates and Plato to this day. The world is richer yet by Moses and the old prophets than by the wisest statesmen. We are indebted to the past. We stand in the greatness of ages that are gone rather than in that of our own. But of how many of us shall it be said that, being dead, we yet speak?

The facile delusions which conceal from us our true situation all amount to this: that we are, or can be, wiser than the wisest men of the past. We are thus induced to play the part, not of attentive and docile listeners, but of impresarios and lion-tamers.

. . . hope resides in the future, while perspective and wisdom are almost always found by looking to the past.

We must respect the past, and mistrust the present, if we wish to provide for the safety of the future.

Learning preserves the errors of the past as well as its wisdom.

Nothingis so ungrateful as a rising generation; yet, if there is any faintest glimmer of light ahead of us in the present, itwas kindled by the intellectual fires that burned long before us.

Our duty is to preserve what the past has had to say for itself, and to say for ourselves what shall be true for the future.

We need to haunt the house of history and listen anew to the ancestors' wisdom.

From the experience of the past we derive instructive lessons for the future.

There is some awe mixed with the joy of our surprise, when this poet, who lived in some past world, two or three hundred years ago, says that which lies close to my own soul, that which I also had wellnigh thought and said.

Hold on to the ancient Way to master the present, and to learn the distant beginning.

In those days he was wiser than he is now - he used frequently to take my advice.

Hold fast to the best of the past and move fast to the best of the future.

... we may remember what the Romansthought a cultivated person ought to be: one who knows how to choose his company among men, among things, among thoughts, in the present as well as in the past.

A great many things which in times of lesser knowledge we imagined to be superstitious or useless, prove today on examination to have been of immense value to mankind.

Truth comes to us from the past, as gold is washed down from the mountains of Sierra Nevada, in minute but precious particles, and intermixed with infinite alloy, the debris of the centuries.

In those days he was wiser than he is now; he used to frequently take my advice.

The ancients knew something, which we seem to have forgotten.

The counsel of the dead is not profitable to the living.

It is but too common, of late, to condemn the acts of our predecessors and to pronounce them unjust, unwise, or unpatriotic from not adverting to the circumstances under which they acted. Thus, to judge is to do great injustice to the wise and patriotic men who preceded us.

A contempt of the monuments and the wisdom of the past, may be justly reckoned one of the reigning follies of these days, to which pride and idleness have equally contributed.

It has been the resolution of mankind in all ages of the world. No people, no age, ever threw away the fruits of past wisdom, or the enjoyment of present blessings, for visionary schemes of ideal perfection. It is the knowledge of the past, the actual infliction of the present, that has produced all changes, all innovations, and all improvements - not (as is pretended) the chimerical anticipation of possible advantages, but the intolerable pressure of long-established, notorious, aggravated, and growing abuses.