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Robert Penn Warren Quotes about Past

If you could not accept the past and its burden there was no future, for without one there cannot be the other.

If you could not accept the past and its burden there was no future, for without one there cannot be the other.

Robert Penn Warren (2006). “All the King's Men”, p.656, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The past is always a rebuke to the present.

Robert Penn Warren, Floyd C. Watkins, John T. Hiers (1980). “Robert Penn Warren talking: interviews, 1950-1978”, Random House (NY)

Reality is not a function of the event as event, but of the relationship of that event to past, and future, events.

Robert Penn Warren (2006). “All the King's Men”, p.578, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

More and more Emerson recedes grandly into history, as the future he predicted becomes a past.

Robert Penn Warren's Acceptance speech for the 1970 National Medal for Literature, New York City, New York, December 2, 1970.