Echoes

Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who ever have been, and ever shall be, animated by the same passions, and thus they necessarily have the same results.

History is largely a record of human behavior, and human behavior has not greatly changed.

Human nature being what it is, events which happened in the past will at some time or other and in much the same ways be repeated in the future.

There is nothing new under the sun.

The earth teaches us more about ourselves than all the books in the world, because it is resistant to us.

Only the great generalizations survive. The sharp words of the Declaration of Independence, lampooned then and since as 'glittering generalities,' have turned out blazing ubiquities that will burn forever and ever.

Come forth into the light of things, let Nature be your teacher.

It is just as foolish to complain that people are selfish and treacherous as it is to complain that the magnetic field does not increase unless the electric field has a curl. Both are laws of nature.

Knowing that certain nights whose sweetness lingers will keep returning to the earth and sea after we are gone, yes, this helps us to die.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.

Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more.

From the heights of these pyramids, forty centuries look down on us.

The way to find out about our place in the universe is by examining the universe and by examining ourselves—without preconceptions, with as unbiased a mind as we can muster. We cannot begin with an entirely clean slate, since we arrive at this problem with predispositions of hereditary and environmental origin; but, after understanding such built-in biases, is it not possible to pry insights from nature?

Nature everywhere speaks to man in a voice familiar to his soul.

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.

The present of things past is memory; the present of things present is sight; and the present of things future is expectation.

Everything changes; nothing perishes.

I don't know whether Napoleon did or did not try to get across there and I don't care. I don't know much about history, and I wouldn't give a nickel for all the history in the world. It means nothing to me. History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today.

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.

Men are at variance with the one thing with which they are in the most unbroken communion, the reason that administers the whole universe.

That which comes after ever conforms to that which has gone before.

History is indeed the witness of times, the light of truth, the life of memory, the teacher of life, the messenger of antiquity; by what other voice, if not that of the orator, is immortality commended?

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

We face the future with our past and our present as guarantors of our promises; and we are content to stand or to fall by the record which we have made and are making.