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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:

Neither a wise man or a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Farsighted theologians are now working to mine the eternal metal from the teachings of Jesus and to forge it for all time.

Max Planck

Rust rust rust
in the engines of love and time

Leonard Cohen

Man is a creature of hope and invention, both of which belie the idea that things cannot be changed.

Tom Clancy

Dreams, she said. Broken dreams are bad enough. But the dream that has no hope...the dream that is doomed long before it’s broken, that’s the worst of all.

Clifford D. Simak Time and Again (1951)

Yes, there is a Government of this changing world. The Government is not in the changing world. It is in the Realm of Permanence, and though the Realm of Permanence pervades this world of change, it cannot be seen by mortal eyes.

Harold W. Percival Thinking and Destiny (1946)

Science is art. It is the process of creating something that never exists before. ... It makes us ask new questions about ourselves, others; about ethics, the future.

Regina E. Dugan

Isn't the future necessarily going to be dominated by machine life?

Steven Novella

The future was not what it used to be.

K. A. Bedford Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait (2008)

Secondly, we will build up a vision of what the future could be like if humanity so chooses — for “without vision the people perish”.

Vera Stanley Alder Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950)

In the Jail, there is a Government supplied radio, and I hear music and news occasionally. My time, however, passes in my pastime; I live by myself, alone.

Hyder Bux Jatoi

Because we humans don’t notice changes that take place slowly, incrementally, we tend to underestimate their cumulative effects, even within the span of one or two lifetimes.

Scott Weidensaul Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere With Migratory Birds (1999)

Life has no meaning without hope, but hope still exists if it is in reassurance.

Yahya Sinwar

Nothing gives a person the same strength to resist adversity and pain as Christian, Pascalian hope.

Eugenio Borgna

To a disciple who was forever complaining about others the Master said, "If it is peace you want, seek to change yourself, not other people. It is easier to protect your feet with slippers than to carpet the whole of the earth."

Anthony de Mello One Minute Wisdom (1989)

We live in a time when the words impossible and unsolvable are no longer part of the scientific community's vocabulary. Each day we move closer to trials that will not just minimize the symptoms of disease and injury but eliminate them.

Christopher Reeve

Abby, I may think of you softly from time to time. But I'll cut off my hand before I ever reach for you again.

Arthur Miller The Crucible (1953)

“The beginning of the end, the beginning of the end,” muttered Lo Hawk. “We must preserve something.”
“The end of the beginning,” sighed La Dire. “Everything must change.”

Samuel R. Delany The Einstein Intersection (1967)

With thee, sweet Hope! resides the heav'nly light,
That pours remotest rapture on the sight:
Thine is the charm of life's bewilder'd way,
That calls each slumb'ring passion into play.

Thomas Campbell The Pleasures of Hope (1799)

My government has no intention to acquire large loans from any country in the near future.

Taneti Maamau Taneti Maamau (2021)

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