A Quote by Alfred North Whitehead
The great achievements of the past were the adventures of the past. Only the adventurous can understand the greatness of the past.
Quote Topics
Quote Author
Related Quotes
Without adventure civilization is in full decay. ... The great fact [is] that in their day the great achievements of the past were the adventures of the past.
The Past -- the dark unfathomed retrospect! The teeming gulf --the sleepers and the shadows! The past! the infinite greatness of the past! For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past?
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
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.
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.
Faith in the creative process, in the dynamics of emergence, in the values and purposes that transcend past achievements and past forms, is the precondition of all further growth.
The past existed in multitudinous ways. You only experienced one probable past. By changing this past in your mind, now, in your present, you can change not only its nature but its effect, and not only upon yourself but upon others.
It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past. Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and active mythology of its past or of a past borrowed from other cultures. It tests its sense of identity, of regress or new achievement against that past.
I think the past is something I have spent a lot of time thinking about, not only what is different about the past but what's the same, and what links us to the past.
There are those who regard this history of past strife and exile as better forgotten. But, to use the phrase of Yeats, let us not casually reduce "that great past to a trouble of fools." For we need not feel the bitterness of the past to discover its meaning for the present and the future.
Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end results of a clean forward thrust, and our present difficulties as signs of decline and decay.
My first memory was of stories about the past - a past that, according to the storytellers, was superior in every way to the life then being lived. It didn't take me long, however, to understand that the present was all we had, for the past was gone, and nothing could be done about it.
You can't kill the past by denying the past. You can kill it only by making it obsolete. And even in that, you have to find honor in the past. You can't hack off pieces of yourself, and expect them to grow again.
Donald Trump's slogan: "Let's make America great again." And when I hear that, that seems to suggest there was a moment in the past when America really was great, you know, when women knew their places, when we could set dogs on black people in Mississippi, when young people went and sit in at lunch counters and were assaulted by others. That's about the death of memory. That's about memory being basically suppressed in a way that doesn't allow people to understand that there were things that happened in the past that we not only have to remember, we have to prevent from happening again.
The great man, Genghis Khan, only knew how to shoot eagles with an arrow. The past is past. To see real heroes, look around you.
How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.
Related Authors
Ada Lovelace Quotes
English
Mathematician
Benoit Mandelbrot Quotes
French
Mathematician
Carl Friedrich Gauss Quotes
German
Mathematician
Charles Babbage Quotes
English
Mathematician
David Hilbert Quotes
German
Mathematician
G. H. Hardy Quotes
British
Mathematician
George Polya Quotes
Hungarian
Mathematician
Hannah Fry Quotes
English
Mathematician
Henri Poincare Quotes
French
Mathematician
Isaac Barrow Quotes
English
Mathematician
Isaac Newton Quotes
English
Mathematician
Norbert Wiener Quotes
American
Mathematician
Pythagoras Quotes
Greek
Mathematician
Rene Descartes Quotes
French
Mathematician
Seymour Papert Quotes
American
Mathematician
Terence Tao Quotes
Australian
Mathematician