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Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.

— Winston Churchill The Second World War (1939)

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More quotes by Winston Churchill

For myself I am an optimist — it does not seem to be much use being anything else.

Some people did not like this ceremonious style. But after all when you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.

The Second World War (book series) (1948)

Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities, because, as has been said, it is the quality which guarantees all others.

To improve is to change, so to be perfect is to have changed often.

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

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

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You can never plan the future by the past.

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

Nothing is there to come, and nothing past,
But an eternal now does always last.

Abraham Cowley Poems (1656)

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