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New Year Quotes

Edmund Burke, in 1791, gave the most useful advice for the occasion: you can never plan the future by the past. The page is built from the pages on change, hope, the future and time, with Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot, Horace and Byron supplying most of the entries. It has no New Year collection behind it.

If you want something about resolutions, the Change page has better material. The famous line about a small group of citizens changing the world, credited to Margaret Mead, is marked disputed. Nobody has found where it comes from.

Random quote on New Year

Most quoted on new year:

I feel that the more I discuss the future with you, the more discouraged I become.

Kelley Armstrong The Poisoner's Ring (2023)

A labyrinth of symbols... An invisible labyrinth of time.

Jorge Luis Borges The Garden of Forking Paths (1942)

A revolution is not a trail of roses.... A revolution is a fight to the death between the future and the past.

Fidel Castro

It is only in appearance that time is a river. It is rather a vast landscape and it is the eye of the beholder that moves.

Thornton Wilder The Eighth Day (1967)

When I envision the future, I think of the world I crave for my daughters and my sons. It is thinking for survival of the species — thinking for life.

Audre Lorde Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

Time past was nothing, no matter how long. Time ahead was everything, no matter how brief.

Sheri S. Tepper Grass (1989)

In spite of its size and range, this is […] a personal essay. It is a Time-haunted man addressing himself chiefly to all those people he knows from experience to be also Time-haunted.

J. B. Priestley Man and Time (1964)

Without conviction that you can make change happen, you will not act, even if you see the vision. Your feelings will hold you back.

John Kotter The Heart of Change (2002)

Change cannot come from one politician, it has to come from each one of us and not just for today...it's a gradual process. Let's be responsible & work towards it.

Akshay Kumar

Questions don't change the truth, but they give it motion.

Giannina Braschi Empire of Dreams (1988)

To one who asked what was the proper time for lunch, he said, "If a rich man, when you will; if a poor man, when you can."

Diogenes of Sinope

This is the first age that's ever paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since we may not have one.

Arthur C. Clarke The Peter Plan : A Proposal for Survival (1976)

There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.

Arthur C. Clarke Values of the Wise : Humanity's Highest Aspirations (2004)

The doctrine of the Kingdom of Heaven, which was the main teaching of Jesus, is certainly one of the most revolutionary doctrines that ever stirred and changed human thought.

H. G. Wells The Outline of History (1920)

There's no more to Holden Caulfield. Read the book again. It's all there. Holden Caulfield is only a frozen moment in time.

J. D. Salinger

History is the ship carrying living memories to the future.

Stephen Spender Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Times (1993)

There comes a time in a man's life when to get where he has to – if there are no doors or windows – he walks through a wall.

Bernard Malamud

Space, time, mass, and energy originate from Chaos, have their being in Chaos, and through th agency of the aether are moved by Chaos into the multiple forms of existence.

Peter J. Carroll Liber Null & Psychonaut (1987)

To know that we are measuring real change we need to have a strong theoretical base.

C. West Churchman C. West Churchman (1970)

Darya had a few moments of wild hope before logic intruded.

Charles Sheffield Transcendence (1992)

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