If you could not accept the past and its burden there was no future, for without one there cannot be the other.
Robert Penn WarrenIf you are an idealist, it does not matter what you do or what goes on around you because it isn't real anyway.
Robert Penn WarrenYet the definition we have made of ourselves is ourselves. To break out of it, we must make a new self. But how can the self make a new self when the selflessness which it is, is the only substance from which the new self can be made?
Robert Penn WarrenThe asking and the answering which history provides may help us to understand, even to frame, the logic of experience to which we shall submit. History cannot give us a program for the future, but it can give us a fuller understanding of ourselves, and of our common humanity, so that we can better face the future.
Robert Penn Warren