Top 1200 Thinking Of The Past Quotes & Sayings

All nations have present, or past, or future reasons for thinking themselves incomparable.

We human beings have enormous difficulty in focusing on the present; we always thinking about what we did, about how we could have done it better.... or else we think about the future, about what we're going to do.... But at this precise moment, you also realize that you can change your future by bringing the past into the present. Past and future only exist in our mind. The present moment, though, is outside of time, it's Eternity.... It isn't what you did in the past the will affect the present. It's what you do in the present that will redeem the past and thereby change the future.

Thinking about the future and thinking about the past is really only a way of ignoring the present.

For me, the new pictures are what I'm thinking about every day. The past is the past, no? Every day is a new challenge.

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 are often wrong about the past, but at least with the past you can change your thinking. We can't do that with the future.

We're not thinking about the past, we're full steam ahead on the future.

I'm not much for sitting around and thinking about the past or talking about the past. What does that accomplish?

I realize now that people are not thinking about you and me or caring what is said about us. They are thinking about themselves-before breakfast, after breakfast, and right on until ten minutes past midnight. They would be a thousand times more concerned about a slight headache of their own than they would about the news of your death or mine.

We live in the moment. We're not thinking about the future right now. We're not thinking about the past, you know. We're living in this moment right here and it's a sweet moment to live in.

People have ignored me in the past, thinking that I probably had an attitude. And I couldn't break that perception.

I drift along, thinking about the past a great deal. The past is so reliable, so delightful, and the best place to live. I end up there quite often, you know; it's very comfortable and dependable.

The more successful enterprises are the more they try to replicate, duplicate, codify what makes us great. And suddenly they're inward thinking. They're thinking how can we continue to do what we've done in the past without understanding that what made them successful is to take risks, to change and to adapt and to be responsive. And so in a sense success breeds its own failure. And I think it's true of a lot of successful businesses.

People don't need to know what Albert Belle is thinking. I've learned from my mistakes in the past, and that's what's made me a better person.

I believe that there is but One Thinker in the universe; that my thinking is His thinking, and that every man's thinking is an extension, through God, of every other man's thinking. I therefore think that the greater the exaltation and ecstasy of my thinking, the greater the standards of all man's thinking will be. Each man is thus empowered to uplift all men as each drop of water uplifts the entire ocean.

We must abandon completely the notion of blaming the past for any kind of situation we're in and reverse our thinking and see that the past always flows back from the present. That now is the creative point of life. So you see it's like the idea of forgiving somebody, you change the meaning of the past by doing that...Also, watch the flow of music. The melody as its expressed is changed by notes that come later. Just as the meaning of a sentence...you wait till later to find out what the sentence means...The present is always changing the past.

There's two kinds of thinking. There is conjunctive thinking and there's disjunctive thinking. Disjunctive thinking says it has to be either/or. Now clearly, there are some either/or's - I either trust Christ or I don't. I'm either pregnant or I'm not. But a lot of thinking in Scripture, when it comes to theology is, in my opinion, conjunctive thinking. It's both/and. I believe that and I believe that.

If a working class Englishman saw a bloke drive past in a Rolls-Royce, he'd say to himself "Come the social revolution and we'll take that away from you, mate". Whereas if his American counterpart saw a bloke drive past in a Cadillac he'd say "One day I'm going to own one of those". To my way of thinking the first attitude is wrong. The latter is right.

My father has always been interested in discarding the past. He's never much liked China or the whole idea behind China or Chinese ways of thinking. He's always been much more attracted to American ways of thinking. He feels Americans are more open - they tell you what they think - and he's very much that way himself.

I'm a workaholic. I would not pretend to be anything else. I rarely go to bed before one o'clock in the morning. I might kind of have a spa between half-past twelve and one and relax, and that's when I do my thinking, or my non-thinking. That's when I have a bit of space for myself.

The power of the past to still dominate our thinking today.

While I honor the soldiers in my family, and I am a student of history, the past is the past, and I do not live in the past.

Latins are predisposed to thinking about the past. Catholicism has a lot to do with it because Catholicism is a contemplation of the past, of symbols that are supposed to be eternally present.

Keep off your thoughts from things that are past and done; for thinking of the past wakes regret and pain.

We don't have an address," I said, "but we do know where he works." "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Vee asked, eyes brightening briefly through the haze of chemical sedation. "Based on past experience, I hope not.

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.

I can't constantly live in the past, thinking that 'Oh my God, I was Miss Universe.'

Modernism is an outmoded way of thinking about design: it just doesn't reflect the way we live now. It always puts forward this idea that the past is irrelevant to tomorrow - and tomorrow is all that matters. But the past is part of who we are.

I find the past so fascinating. Photographs are strange, almost surreal, almost here yet gone. I slip into thinking what the past must have been like and I enjoy creating that ambience and atmosphere - 1730 to around 1870 is the most interesting period.

The past doesn't change no matter how much time you spend thinking about it. Good and bad all add up to the whole. Take away one piece, no matter how small, and the whole changes. Whether it's optimism, pessimism or fatalism, I don't spend my time wishing for the past to be different so present would be different, too. I control my future with what I choose now.

The past is a curious thing. It's with you all the time. I suppose an hour never passes without your thinking of things that happened ten or twenty years ago, and yet most of the time it's got no reality, it's just a set of facts that you've learned, like a lot of stuff in a history book. Then some chance sight or sound or smell, especially smell, sets you going, and the past doesn't merely come back to you, you're actually IN the past. It was like that at this moment.

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.

There ain't a man in the world cares about a woman's past until he's thinking of her in his future.

Fear is when we're thinking about the past or thinking about the future, two things that do not exist. If we stay in the moment, do our best in the moment, enjoy the moment, there is no fear.

I do enjoy thinking about the past.

I don't think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking there's some kind of change.

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.

My process is thinking, thinking and thinking - thinking about my stories for a long time.

Living in the moment, thinking about the future, and staying connected to the past: That's what makes me feel whole.

I'm trying to be present, not thinking and worrying about the past or the future. That's such a waste of time, you know?

I don't think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking theres some kind of change.

The great achievements of the past were the adventures of the past. Only the adventurous can understand the greatness of the past.

I have never had time for the idea of searching. Whenever I wanted to express something, I did so without thinking of the past or the future.

I grew up thinking that it was immoral to idealize the past because, in the past, there was slavery and no penicillin.

The mind is a product of experience. It is the result of past thinking and is modified by present thinking.

Today's banalities apparently gain in profundity if one states that the wisdom of the past, for all its virtues, belongs to the past. The arrogance of those who come later preens itself with the notion that the past is dead and gone. The modern mind can no longer think thought, only can locate it in time and space. The activity of thinking decays to the passivity of classifying.

The last thing I'm thinking about is anybody from my past.

I think of the past and the future as well as the present to determine where I am, and I move on while thinking of these things.

Moving forward in science is as much unwinding the distorted thinking of the past as it is putting a clearer idea on the table.

I'm not much for sitting around and thinking about the past or talking about the past. What does that accomplish? If I can give young people something to think about, like the future, that's a better use of my time.

I do an awful lot of thinking and dreaming about things in the past and the future - the timelessness of the rocks and the hills - all the people who have existed there.

I try and move with the times. If I stop and begin thinking about the past there will be a problem.

I'm living in the present, thinking about the past, hoping for the future.

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?

I am a professional and when I go out there with the badge on, that's all I'm thinking about. Everything else is in the past. Tottenham is what it is for me now.

Marriage is an effort to legalize love. It is out of fear. It is thinking about the future, about the tomorrows. Man always thinks of the past and the future, and because of this constant thinking about past and future, he destroys the present. And the present is the only reality there is. One has to live in the present. The past has to die and has to be allowed to die.

Most power is lost in one's own mind by thinking negative thoughts, by worrying about the future, by focusing on the past, as opposed to thinking positive, strong, and happy thoughts.

It's important to refresh the way of thinking and doing things musically. You can get so stuck in what you've done in the past that you can't move on into the future.

When thinking about the future, it is fashionable to be pessimistic. Yet the evidence unequivocally belies such pessimism. Over the past centuries, humanity's lot has improved dramatically - in the developed world, where it is rather obvious, but also in the developing world, where life expectancy has more than doubled in the past 100 years.

The world will not evolve past its current state of crisis by using the same thinking that created the situation.