A Quote by Edmund Burke

A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

Edmund Burke

Quote Topics

Ancestors Backward Confined Forward Generally Innovation Look Never People Posterity Result Selfish Spirit Temper Views Will

Quote Author

Edmund Burke
Irish - Statesman
January 12, 1729 - July 9, 1797

People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

Edmund Burke

You can't look forward and backward at the same time...........so I choose to look forward.

Buck Brannaman

I look forward to working closely with the Research Councils, Innovate UK, and Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), as we work together to create UKRI. I also look forward to working closely with all of our research and innovation communities to provide a strong and coherent voice for U.K. science and innovation.

Mark Walport

Ancestors do not mean so much. The rebel who succeeds generally makes it easier for the posterity that follows him; so these descendants are usually contented and smug and soft. Rebels are made from life, not ancestors.

Clarence Darrow

Faith begins with a backward look at the cross, but it lives with a forward look at the promises

John Piper

I'd rather look forward and dream, than look backward and regret.

James Van Praagh

I like to think that my finest hour is still ahead of me, so I can look forward rather than look backward.

Jim Coleman

Studios look backward. Filmmakers look forward.

Guillermo del Toro

If you never look just wrong to your contemporaries you will never look just right to posterity - every writer has to try to be, to some extent, sometimes, a law unto himself.

Randall Jarrell

There's nothing on earth to do here but look at the view and eat. You can imagine the result since I do not like to look at views.

Zelda Fitzgerald

Look forward to the future and look forward to the unknown. Nothing stays the same and people change. One day that hurt and pain will be a distant memory.

Angela Merkel

So different are the colors of life, as we look forward to the future, or backward to the past; and so different the opinions and sentiments which this contrariety of appearance naturally produces, that the conversation of the old and young ends generally with contempt or pity on either side.

Samuel Johnson

Paradoxical as it may seem, to believe in youth is to look backward; to look forward we must believe in age.

Dorothy L. Sayers

If you are walking backward, away from something you think is a mistake, you may be right in supposing it is a mistake, but for you to be walking backward is never right. You know what happens to people who walk backward.... We are meant to walk forward, not backward, and reaction is always a matter of walking backward.

J. I. Packer

Neither look forward where there is doubt nor backward where there is regret. Look inward and ask not if there is anything outside you want, but whether there is anything inside that you have not yet unpacked.