The whole position is based on this idea that we have got
all the good that can be got out of the ideas of the past.
But we have not got all the good out of them, perhaps at this
moment not any of the good out of them. And the need here is
a need of complete freedom for restoration as well as revolution.

We often read nowadays of the valor or audacity with which some
rebel attacks a hoary tyranny or an antiquated superstition.
There is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary
or antiquated things, any more than in offering to fight
one's grandmother. The really courageous man is he who defies
tyrannies young as the morning and superstitions fresh
as the first flowers. The only true free-thinker is he whose
intellect is as much free from the future as from the past.
He cares as little for what will be as for what has been;
he cares only for what ought to be. And for my present
purpose I specially insist on this abstract independence.
If I am to discuss what is wrong, one of the first things
that are wrong is this: the deep and silent modern assumption
that past things have become impossible. There is one metaphor
of which the moderns are very fond; they are always saying,
"You can't put the clock back." The simple and obvious answer
is "You can." A clock, being a piece of human construction,
can be restored by the human finger to any figure or hour.
In the same way society, being a piece of human construction,
can be reconstructed upon any plan that has ever existed.

There is another proverb, "As you have made your bed,
so you must lie on it"; which again is simply a lie.
If I have made my bed uncomfortable, please God I will make it again.