Echoes

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.

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

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.

He plants trees whose shade another age will enjoy.

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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

Every generation has the obligation to free men's minds for a look at new worlds… to look out from a higher plateau than the last generation.

Let the future tell the truth and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine.

Men who have made these discoveries before us are not our masters, but our guides.

With Heaven's aid I have conquered for you a huge empire. But my life was too short to achieve the conquest of the world. That task is left for 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.

There is nothing new under the sun.

The explorers of the past were great men and we should honour them. But let us not forget that their spirit lives on. It is still not hard to find a man who will adventure for the sake of a dream or one who will search, for the pleasure of searching, not for what he may find.

You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.

Bear in mind, that if through toil you accomplish a good deed, that toil will quickly pass from you, the good deed will not leave you so long as you live; but if through pleasure you do anything dishonourable, the pleasure will quickly pass away, that dishonourable act will remain with you for ever.

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

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

Waterloo will wipe out the memory of my forty victories; but that which nothing can wipe out is my Civil Code. That will live forever.

Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space.

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.