This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The past can be remembered with a smile or downcast eyes, with the difference being one's attitude.
The current state of knowledge is a moment in history, changing just as rapidly as the state of knowledge in the past has ever changed and, in many instances, more rapidly.
Let the past be content with itself, for man needs forgetfulness as well as memory.
Forgetfulness | Man | Past |
Louis Agassiz, fully Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz
The surface of the earth is not simply a stage on which the thousands of present and past inhabitants played their parts in turn. There are much more intimate relations between the earth and the living organisms which populated it, and it may even be demonstrated that the earth was developed because of them.
If there is a state where the soul can find a resting-place secure enough to establish itself and concentrate its entire being there, with no need to remember the past or reach into the future, where time is nothing to it, where the present runs on indefinitely but this duration goes unnoticed, with no sign of the passing of time, and no other feeling of deprivation or enjoyment, pleasure or pain, desire or fear than the simple feeling of existence, a feeling that fills our soul entirely, as long as this state lasts, we can call ourselves happy, not with a poor, incomplete and relative happiness such as we find in the pleasures of life, but with a sufficient, complete and perfect happiness which leaves no emptiness to be filled in the soul.
Desire | Enough | Fear | Need | Nothing | Past | Pleasure | Present | Soul | Time | Happiness |
The ultimate function of prophecy is not to tell the future, but to make it. Your successful past will block your visions of the future.
Joan Halifax, fully Roshi Joan Jiko Halifax
This stuff of a past not worthily lived is also medicine.
Past |
Jean Paul, born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, aka Jean Paul Richter
The past and future are veiled; but the past wears the widow’s veil, the future, the virgin’s.
Jessamyn West, fully Mary Jessamyn West
The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.
Imagination | Past | Work |
John Diefenbaker, fully John George Diefenbaker
He who does not know the past can never understand the present, and he certainly can do nothing for the future.
Nothing | Past | Understand |
John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.
Past |
John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.
The most unnoticed of all miracles is the miracle of repentance. It is not the same thing as rebirth; it is transformation, creation… Repentance is an absolute, spiritual decision made in truthfulness. Its motivations are remorse for the past and responsibility for the future.
Decision | Miracles | Past | Remorse | Repentance | Responsibility |
It’s absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class. That system effectively cuts you off from the immense diversity of life and the synergy of variety; indeed it cuts you off from your own past and future, sealing you in a continuous present much the same way television does.
Absurd | Age | Diversity | Life | Life | Past | People | Present | System | Television |