„It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past. These are often as highly structured and selective as myths. Images and symbolic constructs of the past are imprinted, almost in the manner of genetic information, on our sensibility. Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and active mythology of its past.“

„The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence“

—  T.S. Eliot, книга Four Quartets

Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)
Источник: Four Quartets
Контексте: The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity.

„Our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of the past.“

—  Walter Benjamin German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940) 1892 - 1940

Источник: (1940), II

„The knowledge of the past stays with us. To let go is to
release the images and emotions, the grudges and fears, the
clingings and disappointments of the past that bind our
spirit.“

—  Jack Kornfield American writer 1945

„Symptoms are meaningless traces, their meaning is not discovered, excavated from the hidden depth of the past, but constructed retroactively - the analysis produces the truth; that is, the signifying frame which gives their symptoms their symbolic place and meaning. As soon as we enter the symbolic order, the past is always present in the form of historical tradition and the meaning of these traces is not given; it changes continually with the transformations of the signifier's network. Every historical rupture, every advent of a new master-signifier, changers retroactively the meaning of all tradition, restructures the narration of the past, and makes it readable in another, new way.“

—  Slavoj Žižek, книга The Sublime Object of Ideology

58
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

„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, книга Aleph

Aleph (2011)

„We never escape our past. It is mirrored in our present. It repeats itself in our future.“

—  Morris West Australian writer 1916 - 1999

Marius Melville in Ch. 17
Cassidy (1986)

„Real independence is a time of new and active creation: people sure enough of themselves to discard their baggage; knowing the past is past, as shaping history, but with a new confident sense of the present and the future, where the decisive meanings and values will be made.“

—  Raymond Williams philosopher 1921 - 1988

1975

„[T]he most important images for human beings are simply words, which are abstract symbols. …[E]volution has greatly enlarged the front lobes of the human brain, which govern the sense of the past and the future; and… they are probably the seat of our other images.“

—  Jacob Bronowski Polish-born British mathematician 1908 - 1974

"The Reach of Imagination" (1967)

„Memory is not just the imprint of the past time upon us; it is the keeper of what is meaningful for our deepest hopes and fears.“

—  Rollo May US psychiatrist 1909 - 1994

Источник: Man’s Search for Himself (1953), p. 220

„The fact remains that there are probable past events that can "still happen" within your personal previous experience. A new event can literally be born in the past -- "now."“

—  Jane Roberts American Writer 1929 - 1984

Источник: The Nature of Personal Reality (1974), p. 355: session 654: April 9, 1973

„When I hear people speak of the evolution of an artist, it seems to me that they are considering him standing between two mirrors that face each other and reproduce his image an infinite number of times, and that they contemplate the successive images of one mirror as his past, and the images of the other mirror as his future, while his real image is taken as his present. They do not consider that they all are the same images in different planes…“

—  Pablo Picasso Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer 1881 - 1973

Paris 1923
As quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 311
Quotes, 1920's

„But we can't escape into the future like we can escape into the past. So those of us who are not certain of things, and there are an awful lot of us, often rush back to the past. And each one has a particular past he prefers to the present. Sometimes I feel that any past is preferable to the present.“

—  Tom Baker English actor 1934

„An example is often a deceptive mirror,
And the order of destiny, so troubling to our thoughts,
Is not always found written in things past.“

—  Pierre Corneille, Cinna

L'exemple souvent n'est qu'un miroir trompeur;
Et l'ordre du destin qui gêne nos pensées
N'est pas toujours écrit dans les choses passées.
Auguste, act II, scene i.
Cinna (1641)

„Today is the last day of an era past.“

—  Boris Yeltsin 1st President of Russia and Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR 1931 - 2007

Speech at a Berlin ceremony to end the Russian military presence in Germany (1 September 1994)
1990s

„Although inanimate things remain our most tangible evidence that the old human past really existed, the conventional metaphors used to describe this visible past are mainly biological.“

—  George Kubler American art historian 1912 - 1996

Источник: The Shape of Time, 1982, p. 33; as cited in Lee (2001, p. 58)

„The Earth with its scarred face is the symbol of the Past; the Air and Heaven, of Futurity.“

—  Samuel Taylor Coleridge English poet, literary critic and philosopher 1772 - 1834

2 June 1824
Table Talk (1821–1834)

„In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.“

—  Alex Haley African American biographer, screenwriter, and novelist 1921 - 1992

As quoted in Traits of a Healthy Family (1985) by Dolores Curran, p. 199.
Контексте: The family is our refuge and our springboard; nourished on it, we can advance to new horizons. In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.

„We must not confuse the present with the past. With regard to the past, no further action is possible.“

—  Simone de Beauvoir, книга The Ethics of Ambiguity

Pt. III : The Positive Aspect of Ambiguity http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/de-beauvoir/ambiguity/ch03.htm#s2, Ch. 1 : The Aesthetic Attitude
The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947)
Контексте: We must not confuse the present with the past. With regard to the past, no further action is possible. There have been war, plague, scandal, and treason, and there is no way of our preventing their having taken place; the executioner became an executioner and the victim underwent his fate as a victim without us; all that we can do is to reveal it, to integrate it into the human heritage, to raise it to the dignity of the aesthetic existence which bears within itself its finality; but first this history had to occur: it occurred as scandal, revolt, crime, or sacrifice, and we were able to try to save it only because it first offered us a form. Today must also exist before being confirmed in its existence: its destination in such a way that everything about it already seemed justified and that there was no more of it to reject, then there would also be nothing to say about it, for no form would take shape in it; it is revealed only through rejection, desire, hate and love. In order for the artist to have a world to express he must first be situated in this world, oppressed or oppressing, resigned or rebellious, a man among men. But at the heart of his existence he finds the exigency which is common to all men; he must first will freedom within himself and universally; he must try to conquer it: in the light of this project situations are graded and reasons for acting are made manifest.

„For the most part, these are not new lessons, but lessons learned in different circumstances and surroundings. The fact that they are not new is of course a lesson in itself — we must continually strive to benefit from past experiences and structure our management so that past related experience can be brought to bear on current problems.“

—  John H. Disher American aeronautical engineer and NASA manager 1921 - 1988

"Skylab Lessons Learned" (22 September 1975) at NASA Office of Logic Design http://klabs.org/richcontent/Misc_Content/AGC_And_History/Skylab/Skylab_Disher.htm