There's no present. There's only the immediate future and the recent past. George Carlin
If history moves forward, knowledge of it travels backwards, so that in writing of our own recent past we are continually meeting ourselves coming the other way. Terry Eagleton
I'm not an historian but I can get interested - obsessively interested - with any aspect of the past, whether it's palaeontology or archaeology or the very recent past. Penelope Lively
When I say I hate nostalgia, I hate things set in the recent past where everything is shiny and new. Chris O'Dowd
The recent past always presents itself as if destroyed by catastrophes. Theodor Adorno
Have you heard a single national figure tell you all of the crises of the recent past are not economic, they're cultural? Newt Gingrich