Echoes

Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future, and time future contained in time past.

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.

There is nothing new under the sun.

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

In the great chain of causes and effects, no single fact can be considered in isolation.

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.

Everything is interaction and reciprocal.

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

You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.

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.

If a man take no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand.

If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants.

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

Everything changes; nothing perishes.

Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature.

The present moment contains past and future. The secret of transformation, is in the way we handle this very moment.

He plants trees whose shade another age will enjoy.

Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.

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.

Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.

We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.

The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.