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We have no idea where we are going, and sweeping, confident articles on the future seem to me, intellectually, the most disreputable of all forms of public utterance. The scientists who are best qualified to talk have kept their mouths shut.

— Kenneth Clark Civilisation (1969)

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More quotes by Kenneth Clark

Leonardo is the Hamlet of art history whom each of us must recreate for himself.

Leonardo da Vinci (1939)

In time of war all countries behave equally badly, because the power of action is handed over to stupid and obstinate men.

The Other Half: A Self Portrait (1977)

It is lack of confidence, more than anything else, that kills a civilisation. We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs.

Civilisation (1969)

Heroes do not easily tolerate the company of other heroes.

Civilisation (1969)

Opera, next to Gothic architecture, is one of the strangest inventions of western man. It could not have been foreseen by any logical process.

Civilisation (1969)

All Kenneth Clark quotes →

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A generation which ignores history has no past —and no future.

Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love (1973)

From now on, everything in life will appear blurry to me. What’s the point of wiping my glasses when my vision has already left me?"

Sanu Sharma

You can never plan the future by the past.

Edmund Burke A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791)

If we don’t care about our past we can’t have very much hope for our future.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Kenneth Clark (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.