Present Quotes
When occasions present themselves, in which the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests, to withstand the temporary delusion, in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection.
Alexander Hamilton
But for me to have the opportunity to stand in front of a bunch of executives and present myself, I had to hustle in my own way. I can't tell you how frustrating it was that they didn't get that. No joke - I'd leave meetings crying all the time.
Kanye West
In a lot of the art world, you have to present yourself as you know what you're doing at a young age. Music gave me another outlet. The 'no wave' bands were such an inspiration; it felt so free - once you start doing it, it's hard to stop. But I can't get away from art. It comes back around. I wouldn't be true to myself if I didn't pursue it.
Kim Gordon
Sonic Youth
I take what I see work. I'm a strict believer in the scientific principle of believing nothing, only taking the best evidence available at the present time, interpreting it as best you can, and leaving your mind open to the fact that new evidence will appear tomorrow.
Adam Osborne
It is hidden but always present.
Lao Tzu
If the future, as imagined in literature, is really the present taken to extremes, then the past is also the present, but boiled down.
Walter Kirn
Our present will become the past of other men and women. We depend on them to remember it with the complexity with which it was suffered. As others, once, depended on us.
Eavan Boland
One of the hardest things we must sometimes do is to be present to another person's pain without trying to fix it, to simply stand respectfully at the edge of that person’s mystery and misery.
Parker Palmer
To admit regret is to understand that we are fallible - that there are powers beyond us. To admit regret is to lose control not only of a difficult past but of the very story we tell about our present. To admit sincere and abiding regret is one of our greatest but unspoken contemporary sins.
David Whyte
I lost a girlfriend when I was in my 30s. She was 46. It all sounds so trite, but I put a Post-it on my dressing-room wall. It said, 'The past is history. The future is a mystery. This moment is a gift, which is why it's called the present.'
Samantha Bond
Now was the present, now was the time containing that sweet union of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, spirit, will and imagination named Nancy.
Jack Vance
The future is purchased by the present.
Samuel Johnson
What is now common to all men is a mere abstract universal, an H.C.F. Highest Common Factor, and Man's conquest of himself means simply the rule of the Conditioners over the conditioned human material, the world of post-humanity which, some knowingly and some unknowingly, nearly all men in all nations are at present labouring to produce.
C. S. Lewis
My mom, Clida, taught my four brothers and me about her father's work to organize black voters in rural Louisiana in the 1950s. We carried her dad's legacy of activism with us. The Civil Rights Movement was present in the daily life of my family in Detroit in the 1970s.
Keith Ellison
The unhappy person is never present to themself because they always live in the past or the future.
Soren Kierkegaard
My son was born somewhat late in my life and I just found myself really feeling like I didn't want to miss out on being a parent and being with him, and not wanting a situation where I was constantly pulled back and forth between being present, and having all these other pressures and considerations.
Karen Allen
Notwithstanding my present incompetency, I am beginning to translate the New Testament, being extremely anxious to get some parts of Scripture, at least, into an intelligible shape, if for no other purpose than to read, as occasion offers, to the Burmans I meet with.
Adoniram Judson
The most formidable of all the ills that threaten the future of the Union arises from the presence of a black population upon its territory; and in contemplating the cause of the present embarrassments, or the future dangers of the United States, the observer is invariably led to this as a primary fact.
Alexis de Tocqueville
He's a dream. He's the greatest. We shoot about 14 pages a day, which is maybe seven different scenes, which is a lot for a TV show. And I don't think we ever work over 12 hours. But that's because we don't really rehearse. We don't. We get some notes and maybe Denis changes this bit of writing or that. He's so present. He has a special talent in that he's so truthful. Working with him, you just fly with the material. He's very centred and very generous.
Andrea Roth
I don't carry the burden of the past or the madness of the future. I live in the present.
Narendra Modi
Literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal considerations are no principle at all. For, to the poet, all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present preferable.
Oscar Wilde
Every child matters. If we fail our children, we are bound to fail our present, our future, faith, cultures, and civilisations as well.
Kailash Satyarthi