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Time & Perspective Quote by Shane Warne

"I think when two people get together, their past is their past. Their reputations are reputations. You can only take someone the way you find them... on face value. I think that was how we were both, the way we were"

About this Quote

Warne’s line reads like a locker-room philosophy upgraded into a public defense: direct, unpretentious, and built to shut down noise. “Past is their past” isn’t poetry; it’s a boundary. He’s insisting that whatever tabloids, teammates, or fans think they know about a person is secondary to the private reality you encounter in a relationship. Coming from someone whose life was routinely treated as entertainment, the simplicity is the point. It’s not naive so much as strategic.

The repetition does a lot of work. “Past,” “reputations,” “face value” form a chain of refusals: no forensic accounting, no moral audit, no crowd-sourced verdict. Warne frames judgment itself as a kind of category error. Reputation is merely a story that follows you; it’s not the person standing in front of you. That’s an athlete’s mindset applied to intimacy: focus on what’s happening in the present, ignore the heckling from the stands.

The subtext is protective, maybe even slightly defensive. “You can only take someone the way you find them” sounds generous, but it also lets him dodge specifics. If you don’t revisit the past, you don’t have to litigate it. The final line - “the way we were” - adds a soft nostalgia, suggesting a partnership founded on mutual nonjudgment, or at least mutual exhaustion with being judged. In a celebrity ecosystem that turns history into a weapon, Warne offers a counter-move: stop keeping score, start watching what’s actually on the field.

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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Warne, Shane. (2026, January 16). I think when two people get together, their past is their past. Their reputations are reputations. You can only take someone the way you find them... on face value. I think that was how we were both, the way we were. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-think-when-two-people-get-together-their-past-121443/

Chicago Style
Warne, Shane. "I think when two people get together, their past is their past. Their reputations are reputations. You can only take someone the way you find them... on face value. I think that was how we were both, the way we were." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-think-when-two-people-get-together-their-past-121443/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I think when two people get together, their past is their past. Their reputations are reputations. You can only take someone the way you find them... on face value. I think that was how we were both, the way we were." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-think-when-two-people-get-together-their-past-121443/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

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Shane Warne (September 13, 1969 - March 4, 2022) was a Athlete from Australia.

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