History/Time/Eternity

“To move with the times is, of course, to go where all times go.”

— C. S. Lewis (1893-1963), British writer and thinker

“History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster.“

— Douglas McArthur (1880-1964), American general in WW 2

“The one thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn anything from history.”

— Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975), British scholar and historian

“All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.”

— C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), British writer and thinker

“You know, we’ll hardly get our feet out of time [and] into eternity that we’ll bow our heads in shame and humiliation. We’ll gaze on eternity and say, ‘My God! Look at all the riches there were in Jesus Christ, and I’ve come to the Judgment Seat almost a pauper!”

— A. W. Tozer (1897-1963), American pastor, author

“The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.”

— President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

“From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.”

— Will Durant (1885-1981), American historian, philosopher and writer

“History is not life. But since only life makes history, the union of the two is obvious.”

— Louis D. Brandeis (1856-1941), US Supreme Court Justice

*“Those who expect moments of change to be comfortable and free of conflict have not learned their history.”

— Joan Wallach Scott (2004), Princeton women’s history professor

“To be able to look back upon one’s past life with satisfaction is to live twice.”

— Lord Acton (1834-1902), British scholar and historian

“History is philosophy teaching by examples.”

— Lord Henry Bolingbroke (1678-1751), British philosopher and politician

“Even such is Time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but in earth and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wander’d all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days;
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust.”

— Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618), Renaissance English explorer and poet

“The man who views the world at 50 the same way as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.”

— Mohammed Ali, boxing great

“The greatest amount of wasted time is the time not getting started.”

— Dawson Trotman (1906-1956), founder of The Navigators

“God doesn’t promise us tomorrow, he does promise us eternity.”

— Tony Snow (1955-2008), former White House presidential spokesperson