Past, present, and future

“There must be what Mr. Gladstone many years ago called "a blessed act of oblivion". We must all turn our backs upon the horrors of the past. We must look to the future. We cannot afford to drag forward across the years that are to come the hatreds and revenges which have sprung from the injuries of the past.”

“The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water…. I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self evident, "that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living:" that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it.”

“Like my three brothers before me, I pick up a fallen standard. Sustained by their memory of our priceless years together I shall try to carry forward that special commitment to justice, to excellence, to courage that distinguished their lives.”

“The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”

“Our duty is to preserve what the past has had to say for itself, and to say for ourselves what shall be true for the future.”

“Whereof what's past is prologue, what to comeIn yours and my discharge.”

“More and more Emerson recedes grandly into history, as the future he predicted becomes a past.”

“There is nothing new under the sun.”

“Man must have been conscious of memories and purposes long before he made any explicit distinction between past, present, and future.”