Past Quotes

You have reckoned that history ought to judge the past and to instruct the contemporary world as to the future. The present attempt does not yield to that high office. It will merely tell how it really was.

The history of the past interests us only in so far as it illuminates the history of the present.

Our enemies are Medes and Persians, men who for centuries have lived soft and luxurious lives; we of Macedon for generations past have been trained in the hard school of danger and war. Above all, we are free men, and they are slaves.

In the past we couldn't talk to non-union workers. Now we can at least talk to non-union workers so we'll be mobilizing them and educating them not for just six or eight months before an election, but we'll be doing it year-round.

What I find interesting about folklore is the dialogue it gives us with storytellers from centuries past.

Saddam Hussein has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do.

I don't think American poetry has gotten any better in the past 35 years. Oddly enough, creative writing programs seem to have been good for fiction, and I would not have predicted that.

I'm a professional fighter and like most professional fighters I have had difficulties with my hands in the past.

What happens when good people are put into an evil place? Do they triumph or does the situation dominate their past history and morality?

The future hasn't happened yet and the past is gone. So I think the only moment we have is right here and no, and I try to make the best of those moments, the moments that I'm in.