Reaching Back Quotes

• Why limit yourself to the experience of your own relatively brief time on earth, according to your biological clock, when the whole realm of the human experience reaching back infinitely far is available to you?

  David McCullough

  Time On Earth, Limits, Clock

  Source: belmontvision.com

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• Every leap forward that I make is by reaching back and firmly getting a footing in the past, and pushing forward as hard as I can.

  Steve Earle

  Past, Pushing Forward, Reaching

  "Will Sheff Meets Steve Earle". Interview with Michael Tedder, www.spin.com. May 17, 2011.

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• I like to see people reaching back for the roots and for the reason why. Not intellectually, but just for the gut feeling of what it's all about.

  Van Morrison

  Roots, People, Feelings

  The Ritchie Yorke Project Interview, ritchieyorke.com. April 21, 2015.

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• Food consists not just in piles of chemicals; it also comprises a set of social and ecological relationships, reaching back to the land and outward to other people.

  Michael Pollan

  Land, People, Social

  Michael Pollan (2008). “In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto”, p.98, Penguin

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• Your desire or beliefs will literally be reaching back into time, teaching the nerves new tricks. Definite reorganizations in that past will occur in your present, allowing you to behave in entirely new fashions. Learned behavior therefore alters not only present and future but also past conduct.

  Jane Roberts

  Fashion, Teaching, Past

  Jane Roberts (2011). “The Nature of Personal Reality (A Seth Book): Specific, Practical Techniques for Solving Everyday Problems and Enriching the Life You Know”, p.359, Amber-Allen Publishing

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• Our philosophy is about reaching back to move forward. We have something different to say with a sensibility that is both old and new.

  John Varvatos

  Philosophy, Moving, Old And New

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• This is about Americans getting off the sidelines and getting onto the playing field, .. This is about each and every one of us who have been blessed by the wealth of this country sharing that blessing by reaching down and reaching back and lifting up somebody in need. That's what America is all about. That's what being American is all about.

  Colin Powell

  Country, Blessed, Blessing

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• Reading literature is a way of reaching back to something bigger and older and different.

  Wendy Lesser

  Reading, Different, Literature

  Wendy Lesser (2014). “Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books”, p.6, Macmillan

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• Not reaching back for what was lost in my yesterdays. And not reaching for what I hope will be in my tomorrow. But living fully with what is right in front of me. And truly seeing the gift of this moment.

  Lysa TerKeurst

  Inspirational, Hope, Live Life

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• If the American Revolution had produced nothing but the Declaration of Independence, it would have been worth while. . . . The beauty and cogency of the preamble, reaching back to remotest antiquity and forward so an indefinite future, have lifted the hearts of millions of men and will continue to do. . . . These words are more revolutionary than anything written by Robespierre, Marx, or Lenin, more explosive than the atom, a continual challenge to ourselves as well as an inspiration to the oppressed of all the world.

  Samuel Eliot Morison

  Inspiration, Heart, Men

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• Through centuries of struggle, Jews across the world have been witnesses not only against the crimes of men, but for faith in God and God alone. Theirs is a story of defiance and oppression, and patience in tribulation reaching back to the exodus and their exile. That story continued in the founding of the state of Israel. That story continues in the defense of the state of Israel.

  George W. Bush

  Struggle, Men, Israel

  "Bush Speaks At Holocaust Memorial Event". CNN Live Event/Special, www.cnn.com. April 19, 2001.

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• A fool will lose tomorrow reaching back for yesterday

  Dionne Warwick

  Yesterday, Fool, Tomorrow

  Song: I Know I'll Never Love This Way Again

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• Science is a cooperative enterprise spanning the generations. It's the passing of a torch from teacher to student to teacher. A community of minds, reaching back to antiquity and forward to the stars.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Teacher, Stars, Community

  "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey/ Standing Up in the Milky Way". Documentary, March 9, 2014.

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• It is almost irrestible for humans to believe that we have some special relation to the universe, that human life is not just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents reaching back to the first three minutes, but that we were somehow built in from the beginning.

  Steven Weinberg

  Life, Believe, Special

  Steven Weinberg (1977). “The first three minutes: a modern view of the origin of the universe”, Basic Books (AZ)

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• Transformationally motivated people are the growing edge of a great continuity of souls reaching back to the very earliest times.

  Barbara Marx Hubbard

  People, Soul, Growing

  Barbara Marx Hubbard (2015). “Conscious Evolution: Awakening the Power of Our Social Potential”, p.200, New World Library

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• As a historian, I have learned that, in fact, not everyone who reaches back into history can survive it. And it is not only reaching back that endangers us; sometimes history itself reaches inexorably forward for us with its shadowy claws.

  Elizabeth Kostova

  Facts, Sometimes, Reaching

  Elizabeth Kostova (2008). “The Historian”, Little, Brown

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