A society that does not correctly interpret and appreciate its past cannot understand its present fortunes and adversities and can be caught unawares in a fast changing world.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
A society is defined as much by how it comes to terms with its past as by its attitude toward the future: its memories are no less revealing than its aims.
Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.
When the mind once allows a doubt to gain entrance, the value of deeds performed grow less, their character changes, we forget the past and dread the future.
People who live in the past generally are afraid to compete in the present. I've got my faults, but living in the past is not one of them. There's no future in it.
There are thus great swathes of the past where understanding is more important and reputable than judgement, because the principal actors performed in line with the ideas and values of that time, not of ours.
I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time.
The past itself, as historical change continues to accelerate, has become the most surreal of subjects - making it possible... to see a new beauty in what is vanishing.
If we understand the past, we are more likely to recognise what is happening around us.
The task of understanding the past is neverending.
A society that has made 'nostalgia' a marketable commodity on the cultural exchange quickly repudiates the suggestion that life in the past was in any important way better than life today.