The past is so often unknowable not because it is befogged now but because it was befogged then, too, back when it was still the present. If we had been there listening, we still might not have been able to determine exactly what Stanton said. All we know for sure is that everyone was weeping, and the room was full.
Interpretation
Understanding the past can be challenging due to its inherent uncertainty.
This quote reflects the idea that our comprehension of past events is clouded not only by time but also by the limitations of our perception during those moments. It emphasizes that even when moments are unfolding, our grasp of their significance or full context can be obscured, leaving us with only fragmented memories or emotional impressions.
In practice
In a discussion about historical accuracy, one might quote this to highlight the ambiguity of past narratives.
The future will be like the past, in the sense that, no matter how amazing or technologically advanced a society becomes, the basic human rhythm of petty malevolence, sordid moneygrubbing, and official violence, illuminated by occasional bursts of loyalty or desire or tenderness, will go on.
The special virtue of freedom is not that it makes you richer and more powerful but that it gives you more time to understand what it means to be alive.
Protein was the most valued ingredient 250 years ago: It was the rarest thing. Now the rarest thing we have is time: time to cook and time to eat.
Love, like light, is a thing that is enacted better than defined: we know it afterward by the traces it leaves on paper.
Nobody knows what the cause is, though some pretend they do; it like some hidden assassin waiting to strike at you. Childless women get it, and men when they retire; it as if there had to be some outlet for their foiled creative fire.
We are all prisoners but some of us are in cells with windows and some without.
So long as you do not achieve social liberty, whatever freedom is provided by the law is of no avail to you.
It's only possible to see people when one is able to see the world as others see it.
The time has come for people of reason to say: Enough is Enough! Religious faith discourages independent thought, it's divisive and it's dangerous.
Utopia is in the moment. Not in some future time, some other place, but in the here and now, or else it is nowhere.
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