Pastoral Resources

The past is our definition. We may strive, with good reason, to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it, but we will escape it only by adding something better to it.

No heirloom of humankind captures the past as do art and language.

I live for the present always. I accept this risk. I don't deny the past, but it's a page to turn.

It is difficult to live in the present, ridiculous to live in the future and impossible to live in the past. Nothing is as far away as one minute ago.

Liberals in Congress have spent the past three decades pandering to environmental extremists. The policies they have put in place are in large part responsible for the energy crunch we are seeing today. We have not built a refinery in this country for 30 years.

I like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past, but I do not fault those who made the decisions at that time, and I will absolutely defend those who carried out the interrogations within the orders they were given.

Your future takes precedence over your past. Focus on your future, rather than on the past.

What are they going to do to me that they haven't done already? They took away my entire past. They took away my entire future. What's left for them to take?

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.

It is, then, by those shadows of the hoary Past and their fantastic silhouettes on the external screen of every religion and philosophy, that we can, by checking them as we go along, and comparing them, trace out finally the body that produced them.

If coming events are said to cast their shadows before, past events cannot fall to leave their impress behind them.

We won the war, but we are losing the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq. It is past time for a new approach, one that relies on accountability, responsibility, and phasing down the scope of our military commitment.

The demands of the present must stand above the political habits of the past.

To be old is to be part of a huge and ordinary multitude... the reason why old age was venerated in the past was because it was extraordinary.

In other words, we are interested in the anatomical and mental characteristics of men living under the same biological, geographical, and social environment, and as determined by their past.

If we should be blessed by some great reward, such as fame or fortune, it's the fruit of a seed planted by us in the past.

I've written more songs for this record than I ever have in the past so I'm trying to give it a lot of special attention to be sure my ideas really get translated right.

I do write about people who are complex and are striving with something and can't quite get past their own stuff, which would be a proxy for myself because that's what the deal is with me.

During the past few decades, modern technology, with radio, TV, air travel, and satellites, has woven a network of communication which puts each part of the world in to almost instant contact with all the other parts.

The very purpose of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution is to protect minority rights against majority voters. Every court decision that strikes down discriminatory legislation, including past Supreme Court decisions, affirming the fundamental rights to marry the person you love, overrules a majority decision.