A Quote by Edward Hallett Carr

The function off the historian is neither to love the past nor to emancipate himself from the past, but to master and understand it as the key to the understanding of the present.

Edward Hallett Carr

Quote Topics

Function Himself Historian Key Love Master Neither Nor Off Past Present To Love Understand Understanding

Quote Author

Edward Hallett Carr
British - Journalist
June 28, 1892 - November 3, 1982

We learn in the past, but we are not the result of that. We suffered in the past, loved in the past, cried and laughed in the past, but that's of no use to the present. The present has its challenges, its good and bad side. We can neither blame nor be grateful to the past for what is happening now. Each new experience of love has nothing whatsoever to do with past experiences. It's always new.

Paulo Coelho

With the historian it is an article of faith that knowledge of the past is a key to understanding the present.

Kenneth M. Stampp

Enjoy the present hour, be mindful of the past; And neither fear nor wish the Approaches of the last. Learn of the skillful: He that teaches himself, hath a fool for his master.

Benjamin Franklin

History in Burckhardt's words is 'the record of what one age finds worthy of note in another.' The past is intelligible to us only in light of the present; and we can fully understand the present only in light of the past. To enable man to understand the society of the past and to increase his mastery over the society of the present is the dual function of history.

Edward Hallett Carr

The establishment of inner harmony is to be attained neither in the past nor in the future, but where the past and future meet, which is the now. When you have attained that point, neither future nor past, neither birth nor death, neither time nor space exist. It is that NOW which is liberation, which is perfect harmony, to which the men of the past and the men of the future must come.

Reginald Horace Blyth

Civilization is an active deposit which is formed by the combustion of the Present with the Past. Neither in countries without a Present nor in those without a Past is it to be discovered.

Cyril Connolly

Laziness acknowledges the relation of the present to the past but ignores its relation to the future; impatience acknowledge its relation to the future but ignores its relation to the past; neither the lazy nor the impatient man, that is, accepts the present instant in its full reality and so cannot love his neighbour completely.

W. H. Auden

Civilization is an active deposit which is formed by the combustion of the Present with the Past. Neither in countries without a Present nor in those without a Past is it to be encountered. Proust in Venice, Matisse's birdcages overlooking the flower market at Nice, Gide on the seventeenth-century quais of Toulon, Lorca in Granada, Picasso by Saint-Germain-des-Prés: there lies civilization and for me it can exist only under those liberal regimes in which the Present is alive and therefore capable of assimilating the Past.

Cyril Connolly

There is neither Past nor Future. There is only the Present.

Ramana Maharshi

But the past does not exist independently from the present. Indeed, the past is only past because there is a present, just as I can point to something over there only because I am here. But nothing is inherently over there or here. In that sense, the past has no content. The past - or more accurately, pastness - is a position. Thus, in no way can we identify the past as past

Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Children have neither past nor future - they rejoice in the present.

John Greenleaf Whittier

Children enjoy the present because they have neither a past nor a future.

Jean de la Bruyere

The present is the past rolled up for action, and the past is the present unrolled for understanding.

Ariel Durant

There is neither past nor future. There is only the present. Yesterday was the present to you when you experienced it, and tomorrow will be also the present when you experience it. Therefore, experience takes place only in the present, and beyond experience nothing exists.

Ramana Maharshi

You can make the argument that there's no such thing as the past. Nobody lived in the past. They lived in the present. It is their present, not our present, and they don't know how it's going to come out. They weren't just like we are because they lived in that very different time. You can't understand them if you don't understand how they perceived reality.