A Quote by Robin Hobb

History is no more fixed and dead than the future. The past is no further away than the last breath you took.

Robin Hobb

Quote Topics

Away Breath Dead Fixed Further Future History Last More Past Than Took

Quote Author

Robin Hobb
American - Writer
Born: March 5, 1952

I believed that by fixing it down in words, I could force sense from all that had happened, that effect would follow cause, and the reason for each event come clear to me. But then I returned one day, to find all my careful scribing gone to fragments of vellum lying in a trampled yard with wet snow blowing over them. I sat my horse, looking down at them, and knew that, as it always would, the past had broken free of my effort to define and understand it. History is no more fixed and dead than the future. The past is no further away than the last breath you took.

Robin Hobb

Fast drivers can see no further than slow drivers, but they must look further down the road to time their reactions safely. Similarly, people with great projects afoot habitually look further and more clearly into the future than people who are mired in day-to-day concerns.

Robert Grudin

As an actor, I only play what is in the moment, rather than in the future, but sometimes the past is more important than what is coming up in the future.

John Barrowman

That the past is ahead, in front of us, is a conception of time that helps us retain our memories and to be aware of its presents. What is behind us [the future] cannot be seen and is liable to be forgotten readily. What is ahead of us [the past] cannot be forgotten so readily or ignored, for it is in front of our minds' eyes, always reminding us of its presence. The past is alive in us, so in more than a metaphorical sense the dead are alive - we are our history.

Epeli Hau'ofa

And yet, strange to say, now that this truth is recognized by most cultivated people — now that the beneficent working of the survival of the fittest has been so impressed on them that, much more than people in past times, they might be expected to hesitate before neutralizing its action — now more than ever before in the history of the world, are they doing all they can to further survival of the unfittest!

Herbert Spencer

Imagination judges the future by the past, but concerns itself with the future more than with the past.

Napoleon Hill

What are they going to do to me that they haven't done already? They took away my entire past. They took away my entire future. What's left for them to take?

Robert Blake

I am convinced that the stratigraphic method will in the future enable archaeology to throw far more light on the history of American culture than it has done in the past.

Edward Sapir

You can’t run away. The past will be only too happy to chase you —- in absolute, complete, and total earnest. Do you know why? Because they’re lonely. The past and memories are very lonely things. I don’t believe in God. Because he doesn’t have a fixed form. The past certainly does exist, even in a world where the future doesn’t have a fixed form. Even if it’s being colored by misunderstandings and delusions, a person’s past can’t be anything but the truth as long as he believes in it. If that’s what you base your actions or your way of life on, isn’t that like being god?

Ryohgo Narita

On the upswing of an economic cycle, workers, consumers, savers, investors, and entrepreneurs imagine a future that is brighter than the past. On the downswing, they imagine a future dimmer than the past.

Sanjaya Baru

The longer I live the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company . . . a church . . . a home.

Charles R. Swindoll

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

Thomas Jefferson

When I went to jail, reality hit so hard that it took my breath away, took my stance away, took my strength away. I was there buck naked, humiliated, sitting in my own crap and urine - this is a metaphor. My ego had run off. Your ego is the biggest coward.

Tim Allen

Our past as well as our future. It could have been completely destroyed when we were brought to the New World as slaves. They even took away our drums. And I don't want to talk about all those negative things going on. But its music is more present in our lives than ever. Blues, samba, calypso, reggae, jazz, salsa, Africa is everywhere.