Paul Fussell Past Quotations

Understanding the past requires pretending that you don't know the present. It requires feeling its own pressure on your pulses without any ex post facto illumination.

Understanding the past requires pretending that you don't know the present.

So many bright futures consigned to the ashes of the past.So many dreams lost in the madness that had engulfed us.Except for a few widely scattered shouts of joy,the survivors of the abyss sat hollow-eyed and silent, trying to comprehend a world without war.

The past is not the present: pretending it is corrupts art and thus both rots the mind and shrivels the imagination and conscience.