Understanding Present Quotes

It's so important for people to pay attention to history and learn from it, because it's the only thing we've got that's going to help us figure out where we are going. Especially the way things are manipulated in the press today. You have to sort through so much stuff to figure out what is real and what is not. It gets harder every day.

The most reliable way to forecast the future is to try to understand the present.

An accurate knowledge of the past of a country is necessary for everyone who would understand its present, and who desires to judge of its future.

All history must be mobilized if one would understand the present.

I thought it necessary to study history, even to study it deeply, in order to obtain a clear meaning of our immediate time.

Ere we can forecast the future we must understand the present and bring a just sense of proportion to our review of the history of the past.

To understand the living present, and the promise of the future, it is necessary to remember the past.

The history of humanity is not a hotel where someone can rent a room whenever it suits him; nor is it a vehicle which we board or get out of at random. Our past will be for us a burden beneath which we can only collapse for as long as we refuse to understand the present and fight for a better future. Only then — but from that moment on — will the burden become a blessing, that is, a weapon in the battle for freedom.

To glorify the past and paint the future is easy, to survey the present and emerge with some light and understanding is difficult.