Societies or companies that expect a glorious past to shield them from the forces of change driven by advancing technology will fail and fall. That applies as much to my own, the media industry, as to every other business on the planet.
On Wall Street, the industry in which I grew up, a culture in which 'my word is my bond' shifted over the past few decades toward one where the big print can say 'Free' while the small print gives the real costs.
I know there is something out there, and like most people, I tend to believe in it more when things go bad. But I'm not like Shirley MacLaine, who probably believes we were past lovers in another life.
By a series of violent shocks, the nations in succession have struggled to shake off the Past, to reverse the action of Time and the verdict of success, and to rescue the world from the reign of the dead.
I meet people, and we can get past small talk pretty quickly if they've read my books. It's a great shortcut.
It is human nature to be shortsighted and to lose momentum to make changes once the story is out of the headlines and there aren't financial incentives or political rewards. We owe to ourselves to learn from the past so we can try to do better.
Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by his heart, and his friends can only read the title.
In the past, people used to tell me to shut up a bit. But what I believe is to put out your opinion and let everyone else react. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong.
I think there comes a time with a quarterback, especially when things go a little sideways, that players begin to try to do things a little uncharacteristic of what they've done in the past.
One of the most unsettling things about 'Monologue' is its long silences, in which the man sits alone, staring into the middle distance, without grip of his narrative, lost to the past.
In 'The Plato Papers' I wanted to get another perspective on the present moment by extrapolating into the distant future. So in that sense, there's a definite similarity of purpose between a book set in the future and a book set in the past.
The simple truth of our finiteness is that we could, by whatever means, go on interminably only at the price of either losing the past and, therewith, our identity, or living only in the past and therefore without a real present. We cannot seriously wish either and thus not a physical enduring at that price.
Luckily I don't have a sinful past, because there's nothing you can hide from your kids now.
Kerry is an adult - he thinks things through. He learns from the present as well as the past. To George Bush, thinking things through is for sissies.
I sat down once with the application for Match.com and started to laugh. I couldn't even get past the first page. And that's a very good site!
When I was young, I was the sweetheart of the press. They loved me but were kind of waiting for me to mess up. I had no skeletons in my closet, no major past to talk about.
My job is to support businesses, that means promoting British commerce in the big emerging markets that have been neglected in the past. It means keeping Britain open to inward investors, trade and skilled workers. It means cutting red tape which is suffocating growing companies which create jobs.
I don't want to wrestle past 35. There's just too much physical strain with 250-pound men slamming into each other.
I made records in the past that are as traditional as any other country records that have been made, but at the same time the records have a contemporary slant on it too.
For the past few centuries, we have defined beauty as tall, slender figures, femininity and white skin.
