Top 100 Past Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”

— Maya Angelou

52. “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

— Solomon

53. “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.”

— Abraham Lincoln

54. “You are what you are today because of the choices you made in the past.”

— Jim Rohn

55. “The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.”

— Harriet Beecher Stowe

56. “Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.”

— Sydney J. Harris

57. “This is what the past is for! Every experience God gives us, every person He puts in our lives is the perfect preparation for the future that only He can see.”

— Corrie ten Boom

58. “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

— Benjamin Franklin

59. “The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.”

— Robert Jordan

60. “I am nostalgic of an era I never knew.”

— Lana Del Rey

61. “What’s past is prologue.”

— William Shakespeare

62. “Don’t judge me by my past. I don’t live there anymore.”

— Zig Ziglar

63. “Your past is just a story. And once you realize this it has no power over you.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

64. “No amount of guilt can change the past and no amount of worrying can change the future.”

— Umar

65. “You have to know the past to understand the present.”

— Carl Sagan

66. “Don’t make excuses, don’t blame the past. The rest of your life can be the best of your life!”

— Joel Osteen

67. “Don’t ever think that the sin of your past means there is no hope for your future.”

— John Piper

68. “Some people live as though they are already dead. There are people moving around us who are consumed by their past, terrified of their future, and stuck in their anger and jealousy. They are not alive; they are just walking corpses.”

— Nhat Hanh

69. “Forget the past.”

— Nelson Mandela

70. “When you begin to realize that your past does not necessarily dictate the outcome of your future, then you can release the hurt. It is impossible to inhale new air until you exhale the old.”

— T.D. Jakes

71. “Trust the past to the mercy of God, the present to His love, and the future to His providence.”

— Saint Augustine

72. “There is no saint without a past, no sinner without a future.”

— Saint Augustine

73. “The past is just a story we tell ourselves.”

— Spike Jonze

74. “Losers live in the past. Winners learn from the past and enjoy working in the present toward the future.”

— Denis Waitley

75. “Study the past if you want to define the future.”

— Confucius

76. “Remember: we all get what we tolerate. So stop tolerating excuses within yourself, limiting beliefs of the past, or half-assed or fearful states.”

— Tony Robbins

77. “The only person with whom you have to compare ourselves, is that you in the past. And the only person better you should be, this is who you are now.”

— Sigmund Freud

78. “Most people spend their entire life imprisoned within the confines of their own thoughts. They never go beyond a narrow, mind-made, personalized sense of self that is conditioned by the past.”

— Eckhart Tolle

79. “Live each day as if it were your last, not in the future, not in the past. You may not get what you want, but, in the long run, you will get what you expect.”

— Denis Waitley

80. “Don’t think about the past. Just be here now.”

— Ram Dass

81. “Forgiveness is about empowering yourself, rather than empowering your past.”

— T.D. Jakes

82. “We celebrate the past to awaken the future.”

— John F. Kennedy

83. “Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.”

— David Mitchell

84. “Always look at what you have left. Never look at what you have lost.”

— Robert H. Schuller

85. “Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.”

— John F. Kennedy

86. “Whatever with the past has gone, the best is always yet to come.”

— Lucy Larcom

87. “All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

88. “No matter how dirty your past is, your future is still spotless.”

— Drake

89. “Just as man cannot live without dreams, he cannot live without hope. If dreams reflect the past, hope summons the future.”

— Elie Wiesel

90. “Don’t allow your past or present condition to control you. It’s just a process that you’re going through to get you to the next level.”

— T.D. Jakes

91. “You can’t look back – you just have to put the past behind you, and find something better in your future.”

— Jodi Picoult

92. “It’s a complete life change when you really want to better yourself and completely change the patterns that you have had in the past. Do I think I still need work? I think everyone needs work. I just keep working on myself.”

— Demi Lovato

93. “The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.”

— William James

94. “The past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities.”

— Stephen Hawking

95. “No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying. The pulpit can be a shop window to display one’s talents; the prayer closet allows no showing off.”

— Leonard Ravenhill

96. “The arms of love encompass you with your present, your past, your future, the arms of love gather you together.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

97. “I think when you move past your fear and you go after your dreams wholeheartedly, you become free.”

— LL Cool J

98. “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!”

— Charles Dickens

99. “The increase of disorder or entropy is what distinguishes the past from the future, giving a direction to time.”

— Stephen Hawking

100. “In the past a leader was a boss. Today’s leaders must be partners with their people. They no longer can lead solely based on positional power.”

— Kenneth H. Blanchard