100 Quotes for Leaving the Past Behind

No matter what happened to you in the past, it doesn’t have to define you. Everyone has their own personal history, and maybe there are things that you wish you could forget. It might be a failed relationship, an unpleasant job, or something related to your family. No matter what it is, you can learn to let it go and move on. Here are our most powerful quotes for leaving the past behind, so you can move forward with your life.

Why should I leave the past behind?

Leaving the past behind means you can move forward and begin to create a new life for yourself. We often tend to go over things again and again in our mind, which means we aren’t fully living in the present moment.

Leaving the past in the past doesn’t mean you need to forget about what happened completely. You can still move forwards with the valuable lesson learned from the experience and use this to help shape you into a wiser person.

If you’re ready to process the past and move on from what’s holding you back, here are 100 quotes for leaving the past behind.

Quotes for leaving the past behind

“I have great respect for the past. If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going. I have respect for the past, but I’m a person of the moment. I’m here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I’m at, then I go forward to the next place.” – Maya Angelou
“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.” – Marcus Garvey
“The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.” – Oscar Wilde
“Do not brood over your past mistakes and failures as this will only fill your mind with grief, regret and depression. Do not repeat them in the future.” – Swami Sivananda
“Study the past, if you would divine the future.” – Confucius
“Nothing is a bigger waste of time than regretting the past and worrying about the future.” – James Meredith
“I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes, so live not in your yesterdays, no just for tomorrow, but in the here and now. Keep moving and forget the post mortems; and remember, no one can get the jump on the future.” – Carl Sandburg
“We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience.” – George Washington
“The past is a stepping stone, not a millstone.” – Robert Plant
“The past is our definition. We may strive with good reason to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it. But we will escape it only by adding something better to it.” – Wendell Berry

Quotes about letting go

“You are always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.” – Richard Bach
“People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.” – Thich Nhat Hanh
“Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.” – Hermann Hesse
“Letting go helps us to to live in a more peaceful state of mind and helps restore our balance. It allows others to be responsible for themselves and for us to take our hands off situations that do not belong to us. This frees us from unnecessary stress.” – Melody Beattie
“Nothing in the universe can stop you from letting go and starting over.” – Guy Finley
“You can live your life angry, bitter, mad at somebody or even guilty, not letting go of your own mistakes, but you won’t receive the good things God has in store.” – Joel Osteen
“What’s the greater risk? Letting go of what people think – or letting go of how I feel, what I believe, and who I am?” – Brene Brown
“Love isn’t always about hanging on. Sometimes it’s about letting go.” – Reham Khan
“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.” – Joseph Campbell
“It doesn’t take a lot of strength to hang on. It takes a lot of strength to let go.” – J. C. Watts

Quotes about creating a new life for yourself

“Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.” – Anais Nin
“Anyone who’s looked into a newborn’s innocent eyes should realize how incredible it is to be blessed with a new life.” – John Kennedy
“Even though you may want to move forward in your life, you may have one foot on the brakes. In order to be free, we must learn how to let go. Release the hurt. Release the fear. Refuse to entertain your old pain. The energy it takes to hang onto the past is holding you back from a new life. What is it you would let go of today?” – Mary Manin Morrissey
“I feel like I have a new life and I’m going to take full advantage of it.” – William Green
“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” – Arthur Ashe
“Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start.” – Nido Qubein
“I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning.” – J. B. Priestley
“Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.” – Richard Branson
“Do not wait; the time will never be ‘just right.’ Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.” – George Herbert
“Every day is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday’s success or put its failures behind and start over again. That’s the way life is, with a new game every day, and that’s the way baseball is.” – Bob Feller

Quotes about releasing guilt

“I am not ashamed of my past; I am not ashamed of my humble beginnings.” – Madam C. J. Walker
“When you forgive, you in no way change the past – but you sure do change the future.” – Bernard Meltzer
“Negative emotions like loneliness, envy, and guilt have an important role to play in a happy life; they’re big, flashing signs that something needs to change.” – Gretchen Rubin
“Guilt is cancer. Guilt will confine you, torture you, destroy you as an artist. It’s a black wall. It’s a thief.” – Dave Grohl
“People tend to dwell more on negative things than on good things. So the mind then becomes obsessed with negative things, with judgments, guilt and anxiety produced by thoughts about the future and so on.” – Eckhart Tolle
“No matter how frustrated, disappointed and discouraged we may feel in the face of our failures, it’s only temporary. And the faster you can stop wallowing in guilt, blame or resentment, the faster you can put it behind you.” – Fabrizio Moreira
“An exciting and inspiring future awaits you beyond the noise in your mind, beyond the guilt, doubt, fear, shame, insecurity and heaviness of the past you carry around.” – Debbie Ford
“There’s no regret. You can’t regret. I mean, I’ve felt regret but I’ve also refused to allow regret to sow a seed and live in me because I don’t believe it. You feel it, it’s like guilt, it’s like jealousy, it’s like all those horrible things. You’ve just got to snip them and get them out, because they’re no good.” – Jude Law
“Guilt is anger directed at ourselves – at what we did or did not do. Resentment is anger directed at others – at what they did or did not do.” – Peter McWilliams
“Let come what comes, let go what goes. See what remains.” – Ramana Maharshi

Quotes about letting go of fear

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” – Frank Herbert
“Yesterday’s the past, tomorrow’s the future, but today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present.” – Bil Keane
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.” – Rosa Parks
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” – H. P. Lovecraft
“Fear can be good when you’re walking past an alley at night or when you need to check the locks on your doors before you go to bed, but it’s not good when you have a goal and you’re fearful of obstacles. We often get trapped by our fears, but anyone who has had success has failed before.” – Queen Latifah
“I say I am stronger than fear.” – Malala Yousafzai
“We consume our tomorrows fretting about our yesterdays.” – Persius
“There are times when fear is good. It must keep its watchful place at the heart’s controls.” – Aeschylus
“Grief has limits, whereas apprehension has none. For we grieve only for what we know has happened, but we fear all that possibly may happen.” – Pliny the Elder

Quotes about the past being the past

“Look back, and smile on perils past.” – Walter Scott
“One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.” – Golda Meir
“God cannot alter the past, though historians can.” – Samuel Butler
“If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future.” – Winston Churchill
“There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.” – C.S. Lewis
“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” – John F. Kennedy
“Surrender to what is. Let go of what was. Have faith in what will be.” – Sonia Ricotti
“You can’t change what’s already happened, so there’s no value in wishing it were different.” – Hal Elrod
“It’s better to look ahead and prepare, than to look back and regret.” – Jackie Joyner-Kersee
“Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.” – James Thurber

Quotes for moving on

“If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.” – Baruch Spinoza
“Every day is a new day, and you’ll never be able to find happiness if you don’t move on.” – Carrie Underwood
“No matter what job or industry you’re in, life is hard, but we’re all going through a difficult time and the best thing we can do is pick each other up and move on together.” – Eric Nam
“Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on.” – Henry Rollins
“Life stuff happens. You get knocked down, and you get back up. That’s just always been my mentality. I’m not really fazed by anything. It’s in the past. There’s nothing I can really do about it now. You learn from it, and you move on.” – Odell Beckham, Jr.
“I chose and my world was shaken. So what? The choice may have been mistaken; the choosing was not. You have to move on.” – Stephen Sondheim
“We need to realize that our path to transformation is through our mistakes. We’re meant to make mistakes, recognize them, and move on to become unlimited.” – Yehuda Berg
“Life is short. You have to be able to laugh at our pain or we never move on.” – Jeff Ross
“Laughter gives us distance. It allows us to step back from an event, deal with it and then move on.” – Bob Newhart
“I live in the moment. I can turn the page and move on.” – Nadia Comaneci

Quotes about not letting the past define you

“The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power.” – Unknown
“Mistakes and pressure are inevitable; the secret to getting past them is to stay calm.” – Travis Bradberry
“Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.” – Harvey Fierstein
“You cannot define a person on just one thing. You can’t just forget all these wonderful and good things that a person has done because one thing didn’t come off the way you thought it should come off.” – Aretha Franklin
“We must not allow other people’s limited perceptions to define us.” – Virginia Satir
“I do know one thing about me: I don’t measure myself by others’ expectations or let others define my worth.” – Sonia Sotomayor
“It is not our mistakes that define who we are; it is how we recover from those mistakes.” – Bo Bennett
“Through life’s ups and downs, and the few mistakes we make and all the successes that we get, let nobody – nobody’s opinion – define who you are. And if anybody defines who you are, let it be yourself.” – Mahira Khan
“In this universe, and this existence, where we live with this duality of whether we exist or not and who are we, the stories we tell ourselves are the stories that define the potentialities of our existence. We are the stories we tell ourselves.” – Shekhar Kapur
“Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.” – Alan Watts

Quotes about being in the present moment

”Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.” – Buddha
“People don’t realize that now is all there ever is; there is no past or future except as memory or anticipation in your mind.” – Eckhart Tolle
“I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.” – Alan Watts
“The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.” – Abraham Maslow
“Whatever has happened to you in your past has no power over this present moment, because life is now.” – Oprah Winfrey
“There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man’s whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment.” – Yamamoto Tsunetomo
“A great hallmark of mental wellness is the ability to be in the present moment, fully and with no thoughts of being elsewhere.” – Wayne Dyer
“There are certain ways in which I cultivate awareness, both through mindful yoga and taking care of my body and taking time to actually drop as deeply as possible into stillness, into whatever is unfolding in the present moment.” – Jon Kabat-Zinn
“I know that the purpose of life is to understand and be in the present moment with the people you love. It’s just that simple.” – Jane Seymour
“If you abandon the present moment, you cannot live the moments of your daily life deeply.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

Quotes about creating a good future

“We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.” – George Bernard Shaw
“Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.” – Marcus Aurelius
“Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.” – Wayne Dyer
“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” – Peter Drucker
“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.” – George Bernard Shaw
“Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.” – Golda Meir
“Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.” – William James
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.” – Steve Jobs
“I don’t know what the future may hold, but I know who holds the future.” – Ralph Abernathy
“Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children.” – Sitting Bull

Final thoughts on quotes about leaving the past behind

Hopefully the above quotes have left you feeling positive about leaving the past behind and moving forward with your life. Beginning to let go of past pain might be difficult, so be patient with yourself. Choose to let go of the past, forgive yourself for any mistakes you made, and focus on the present moment. There’s a brighter future to look forward to.