Quotes on Our Past

It's OK to quote from your past. But I'm more interested in quoting from my present and pointing towards the future.

Our politics are our deepest form of expression: they mirror our past experiences and reflect our dreams and aspirations for the future.

Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future.

Every event has a purpose and every setback its lesson. I have realized that failure, whether of the personal, professional or even spiritual kind, is essential to personal expansion. It brings inner growth and a whole host of psychic rewards. Never regret your past. Rather, embrace it as the teacher that it is.

You are not the product of your circumstances. You are a composite of all the things you believe, and all the places you believe you can go. Your past does not define you. You can step out of your history and create a new day for yourself. Even if the entire culture is saying, "You can't." Even if every single possible bad thing that can happen to you does. You can keep going forward.

You can't master your future if you're still a slave to your past.

Regardless of your past, your tomorrow is a clean slate.

Don't use the hardships of your past as excuses to deny the possibilities of your future.

Do not let anything from your past inhibit you in this Present Moment. Start over. Start Fresh. Each day. Each hour, if it serves you. Heck, each minute. Just get going. Just do it. Just say it. With love. All else will take care of itself.

The judgment: You are now before Yama, King of the Dead. In vain will you try to...deny or conceal the evil deeds you have done. ... the mirror in which Yama seems to read your past is your own memory, and also his judgment is your own. It is you yourself who pronounce your own judgment.

Do not die in the history of your past hurts and past experiences, but live in the now and future of your destiny.

By honestly acknowledging your past errors, but never damning yourself for them, you can learn to use your past for your own future benefit.

Live today. Remove all blame from your vocabulary. Catch yourself when you find yourself using your past history as a reason for your failure to act today, and instead say, 'I am free now to detach myself from what used to be.'

I don't want your future,_x000D_ I don't need your past._x000D_ One bright moment_x000D_ Is all I ask.

Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.

There is no greater mystery than this, that we keep _x000D_ seeking reality though in fact we are reality. We _x000D_ think that there is something hiding reality and that _x000D_ this must be destroyed before reality is gained. _x000D_ How ridiculous! A day will dawn when you will laugh _x000D_ ... at all your past efforts. That which will be the day _x000D_ you laugh is also here and now.

We cannot change our past. We can not change the fact that people act in a certain way. We can not change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.

In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.

In a futile attempt to erase our past, we deprive the community of our healing gift. If we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame, our inner darkness can neither be illuminated nor become a light for others.

The glory of this land has been its capacity for transcending the moral evils of our past. For example, the long struggle of minority citizens for equal rights, once a source of disunity and civil war, is now a point of pride for all Americans. We must never go back. There is no room for racism, anti-Semitism, or other forms of ethnic and racial hatred in this country.

It has had a calamitous effect on converted peoples. To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say 'my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn't matter'.