We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it.
Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973) American politician, educator, US President (1963-69)
Speech (1963-12-13), Consumer Advisory Council, Washington, D.C.
(Source)
Quotations about:
laurels
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
What good is having laurels if you can’t rest on them?
Tom Lehrer (b. 1928) American mathematician, satirist, songwriter
People (11 Jan 1982)
(Source)
Lehrer has used the phrase and variants many times over the years.
The trouble with being number one in the world — at anything — is that it takes a certain mentality to attain that position in the first place, and that is something of a driving, perfectionist attitude, so that once you do achieve number one, you don’t relax and enjoy it.
Billie Jean King (b. 1943) American tennis player
Billie Jean (1982)
Creativity is constantly in danger of being destroyed by success. The more effectively the environment is mastered, the greater is the temptation to rest on one’s oars.
Henry Kissinger (1923-2024) German-American diplomat
The Necessity for Choice: Prospects of American Foreign Policy, 8.3 (1961)
But Goethe tells us in his greatest poem that Faust lost the liberty of his soul when he said to the passing moment: “Stay, thou art so fair.” And our liberty, too, is endangered if we pause for the passing moment, if we rest on our achievements, if we resist the pace of progress. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.
John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) US President (1961-63)
Speech, Paulskirche, Frankfurt, Germany (25 Jun 1963)
(Source)
Variant in some locations: "... And those who look only to the past are certain to miss the future."