History Repeated Quotes & Sayings

He grinned. It was a wicked grin, the kind that made the blood in Clary's veins run a little faster. "You want to go on a date?"
Caught off guard, she stammered. "A wh-what?"
"A date," Jace repeated. "Often 'a boring thing you have to memorize in history class,' but in this case, 'an offering of an evening of blisteringly white-hot romance with yours truly."
"Really?" Clary was not sure what to make of this. "Blisteringly white-hot?"
"It's me," said Jace. "Watching me play Scrabble is enough to make most women swoon. Imagine if I actually put in some effort. — Cassandra Clare

So nobody must be allowed to think at all. Down with the public schools! Children must be drilled mentally by quarter-educated herdsmen, whose wages would stop at the first sign of disagreement with the bosses. For the rest, deafen the whole world with senseless clamour. Mechanize everything! Give nobody a chance to think. Standardize "amusement." The louder and more cacophonous, the better! Brief intervals between one din and the next can be filled with appeals, repeated 'till hypnotic power gives them the force of orders, to buy this or that product of the "Business men" who are the real power in the State. Men who betray their country as obvious routine.
The history of the past thirty years is eloquent enough, one would think. What these sodden imbeciles never realize is that a living organism must adapt itself intelligently to its environment, or go under at the first serious change of circumstance. — Aleister Crowley

There is a crucial omission. The front page should display the words of the Nuremberg judgment of prominent Nazis - words that must be repeated until they penetrate general consciousness: Aggression is "the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." And alongside these words there should be the admonition of the chief prosecutor for the United States, Robert Jackson: "The record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well. — Noam Chomsky

Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy, if possible; and when you strike and overcome him, never let up in the pursuit so long as your men have strength to follow; for an army routed, if hotly pursued, becomes panic-stricken, and can then be destroyed by half their number. The other rule is, never fight against heavy odds, if by any possible maneuvering you can hurl your own force on only a part, and that the weakest part, of your enemy and crush it. Such tactics will win every time, and a small army may thus destroy a large one in detail, and repeated victory will make it invincible. — Stonewall Jackson

That's what History teaches us, I think, that life goes on, even though individuals die and whole civilizations crumble away: The simple things last; they are repeated over and over by each generation. — Philip Reeve

she concludes, "I will not yield to or be intimidated by the illegal representatives of a seditious administration, and I ask no more of the American people than that they follow my example and refuse to accept or support government conduct that is indefensible. The history of the present administration is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, — Philip Roth

Simon hated her for that. Perhaps it was automatic. Her appearance alone made her different from him, and human beings had always feared and hated anyone who was different. Two thousand years of history saw it being repeated over and over, the perpetual struggle of one race, or tribe, or creed, against another ... each one thinking they were right, superior, morally justified, or chosen by God. Simon saw himself as normal, Laura as abnormal. — Louise Lawrence

Once in a while a new government initiates a program to put power to better use, but its success or failure never really proves anything. In science, experiments are designed, checked, altered, repeated
but not in politics ... We have no real cumulative knowledge. History tells us nothing. That's the tragedy of a political reformer. — B.F. Skinner

...one may easily define two diametrically opposed lessons to be drawn from Jewish history: one holds that the memory of Jewish suffering should lead to a humanistic, universalist approach emphasizing the dangers of intolerance and racism; this is the lesson embodied in the repeated historical reminders that the Jews were brought 'out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage,' and that consequently, they were enjoined, 'love ye therefore the stranger, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.'"

"The other lesson seeks revenge for past sufferings, and beckons the Jews, now that they have their state, to hunt with the wolves and - invoking the injunction to remember the Amalekites - seeks to apply rules of exclusiveness laid down in totally different circumstances. — Amnon Rubinstein

A legacy is not what is recorded in history books or repeated in song, but what is woven into the souls of those who remain.
(from The General's Legacy) — Adrian G. Hilder

And this is why studying the history of psi is important. People have been reporting these phenomena for millennia and studying them for centuries. Human experiences that continue to be repeated throughout history and across cultures, are not due to ignorance or lack of critical thinking, and demand a serious explanation. — Dean Radin

The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility. The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated. That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power ever has paid to Reason. — Robert H. Jackson

In fact if you look at Reagan's global war on terrorism it very quickly turned into a massive terrorist war: [by us] Central America, South Africa, the Middle East, all U.S.-backed terrorism. That's one of the reasons why it disappeared from history and why the standard line is that Bush 43 declared the war on terror. Actually he just repeated what Reagan had said 20 years earlier. — Noam Chomsky

History is the science of things which are not repeated. — Paul Valery

Careless of waste, wallowing in refuse, exterminating the enemies ... despising age, denying human natural history, fabricating pseudotraditions, swamped in the repeated personal crises of the aging preadolescent; all are familiar images of American society. They are signs of private nightmares of incoherence and disorder in broken climaxes where technologies in pursuit of mastery create ever-worsening problems - private nightmares expanded to a social level. — Paul Shepard

History is not an agreed-upon fiction but what gets made in a crowded room; what is said isn't what's heard, and what's heard isn't what gets repeated. Civilization is an agreement to keep people from shouting 'Fire!' in a crowded theater, but the moments we call historical occur when there is a fire in a crowded theater; and then we all try to remember afterward when we heard it, and if we ever really smelled smoke, and who went first and what they said. The indeterminancy is built into the emotion of the moment. The past is so often unknowable not because it is befogged now but because it was befogged then, too, back when it was still the present. If we had been there listening, we still might not have been able to determine exactly what Stanton said. All we know for sure is that everyone was weeping and the room was full. — Adam Gopnik

History buried becomes history repeated. A whole generation of Africans have been denied the truth of their own history, and so we do not really know ourselves, or our countries. Reclaiming those erased or hidden histories is vital political and creative work, and is central to my purpose as a writer. — Shailja Patel

Man, as man, has never realized himself. The greater part of him, his potential being, has always been submerged. What is history if not the endless story of his repeated failures? — Henry Miller

Time is a strange storyteller. It writes, erases and rewrites endlessly. Things change, places and people become unrecognizable, but stories are repeated endlessly — Vandana Shanker

The history of the world is, sadly, not a pretty poem. It offers little variety, and it is nearly always the unpleasant things that are repeated, over and over again. — E.H. Gombrich

History repeated itself. The 'don't do the things I did' mantra was tiresome posh. The best way to make sure your children don't grow up as cunts is not to be one yourself - or not to let them SEE you being one. This is easier as a sober artist in Santa Barbara than as an alcoholic jailbird in Leith. — Irvine Welsh

Thunderstorms were common in Sarantium on midsummer nights, sufficiently so to make plausible the oft-repeated tale that the Emperor Apius passed to the god in the midst of a towering storm, with lightning flashing and rolls of thunder besieging the Holy City. Even Pertennius of Eubulus, writing only twenty years after, told the story this way, adding a statue of the Emperor toppling before the bronze gates to the Imperial Precinct and an oak tree split asunder just outside the landward walls. Writers of history often seek the dramatic over the truth. It is a failing of the profession. — Guy Gavriel Kay

Your mother brought a strange man to this house once, Katarina. I had hoped it might be a few years before history repeated itself."
Kat rolled her eyes at the mention of her father. "Uncle Eddie, I brought Hale home ages ago," she reminded him; but her uncle just shook his head.
"I've known my great-niece's friend. A boyfriend, on the other hand ... that is a most different matter."
"Yes, sir," Hale said. He stood up a little straighter, spoke a little louder.
"You have a powerful family, boy."
"Yes, sir," Hale said. "Please don't hold them against me."
Then Eddie gave a wry smile. "Who says I was talking about them? — Ally Carter

The military ain't there for the people's protection,
They're just there to protect an investment.
That's why people get arrested, electrocuted, molested,
Connected streets are infested with those tired of protesting.
Traumatized children grown in guerrilla garrisons,
9/11 generations pale in comparison.
And you will learn a lesson repeated through history:
That no matter what you think, occupation is not victory. — Immortal Technique

Paul's One Way Out is a fresh, intelligently arranged, and satisfyingly complete telling of the lengthy (and unlikely) history of the group that almost singlehandedly brought rock up to a level of jazz-like sophistication and virtuosity, introducing it as a medium worthy of the soloist's art. Oral histories can be tricky things: either penetrating, delivering information and backstories that get to the heart of how timeless music was made. Or too often, they lie flat on the page, a random retelling of repeated facts and reheated yarns. I'm happy to say that Paul's is in that first category. — Ashley Kahn

The repeated lies become history, but they don't necessarily become the truth. — Colum McCann

Time, and repeated screenings, have endowed the memory with a menace the original did not possess. -The Secret History, pg. 260 — Donna Tartt

I know something about that war, and I never want to see that history repeated. But, my fellow Americans, it certainly can be repeated if the peace-loving democratic nations again fearfully practice a policy of standing idly by while big aggressors use armed force to conquer the small and weak. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Must the mistakes of history be endlessly repeated? Granting PNTR to China will strengthen the hand of hard-liners, by telling the regime that America will never do anything meaningful to counter its aggression. — Don Feder

The word of the oldest of the old of our peoples didn't stop. It spoke the truth, saying that our feet couldn't walk alone, that our history of pain and shame was repeated and multiplied in the flesh and blood of the brothers and sisters of other lands and skies. — Subcomandante Marcos

History repeats itself only in that, from afar, we all seem to lead exactly the same life. We are all born; we all spend time here on earth; we all die. But up close, we have each walked down our own separate paths. We have stood at our own lonely crossroads. We have touched the lives of others at crucial points, for better or for worse. In the end, each of us has lived a unique life story, astounding and complicated, a story that could never be repeated. — Edward Bloor

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States." More important, all of Jefferson's specific digs at the king were preceded by one self-evident fact that obliterated any and all justifications for monarchy, aristocracy, and colonialism until the end of time, even though neither its author nor his comrades truly believed it: All men are created equal. A — Sarah Vowell

While the Romans languished under the ignominious tyranny of eunuchs and bishops, the praises of Julian were repeated with transport in every part of the empire, except in the palace of Constantius. — Edward Gibbon

It's not so much that history is simply cyclical, it seems to progress via recursive, repeated fractal patterns with minute variations. — Grant Morrison

We were told that a strong attraction to a patient with a repeated history of failed treatment is a danger sign - like the fins on the parallel lines. It is an illusion - a cognitive illusion - and I (System 2) was taught how to recognize it and advised not to believe it or act on it. The question that is most often asked — Daniel Kahneman

Not long ago I saw a slice of watermelon on the table. And, there on the naked table, it looked like a madman's laugh (I don't know how else to put it). If I weren't resigned to living in a world that forces me to be sensible, how I would scream in fright at the happy prehistoric monstrosities of the earth. Only an infant isn't shocked: he too is a happy monstrosity repeated since the beginning of the history of man. Only afterwards does fear come, the pacification of fear, the denial of fear - in a word, civilization. Meanwhile, atop the naked table, the screaming slice of red watermelon. I am grateful to my eyes that are still so frightened. I shall yet see many things. To be honest, even without watermelon, a naked table is also a sight to see. — Clarice Lispector

To live only to suffer - only to feel the injury of life repeated and enlarged - it seemed to her she was too valuable, too capable, for that. Then she wondered if it were vain and stupid to think so well of herself. When had it even been a guarantee to be valuable? Wasn't all history full of the destruction of precious things? Wasn't it much more probable that if one were fine one would suffer? — Henry James

Poem Written in a Copy of Beowulf
At various times, I have asked myself what reasons
moved me to study, while my night came down,
without particular hope of satisfaction,
the language of the blunt-tongued Anglo-Saxons.
Used up by the years, my memory
loses its grip on words that I have vainly
repeated and repeated. My life in the same way
weaves and unweaves its weary history.
Then I tell myself: it must be that the soul
has some secret, sufficient way of knowing
that it is immortal, that its vast, encompassing
circle can take in all, can accomplish all.
Beyond my anxiety, beyond this writing,
the universe waits, inexhaustible, inviting. — Jorge Luis Borges

Marx wrote that 'History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.' This was witty but far from true. History is never repeated, but it borrows, steals, echoes and commandeers the past to create a hybrid, something unique out of the ingredients of past and present. — Simon Sebag Montefiore

Will sex between humans ever lose its endlessly repeated history? — Samuel R. Delany

You do not preach and encourage hatred for the Negro and hope to restrict it to that field. It is an old, old story. It is one repeated over and over again in history. When the wolves of hate are loosed on one people, then no one is safe. — Ralph McGill

The primordial image, or archetype, is a figure
be it a daemon, a human being, or a process
that constantly recurs in the course of history and appears wherever creative fantasy is freely expressed. Essentially, therefore, it is a mythological figure ... In each of these images there is a little piece of human psychology and human fate, a remnant of the joys and sorrows that have been repeated countless times in our ancestral history ... — Carl Jung

The truth was, history repeated itself on a daily basis; mistakes were made over and over. People were haunted by what they had done, and by what they hadn't had time to do. — Jodi Picoult

Some people want the past repeated and have an interest in making sure we don't remember it. — Paul Krugman

There are matters in that book, said to be done by the express command of God, that are as shocking to humanity, and to every idea we have of moral justice, as any thing done by Robespierre, by Carrier, by Joseph le Bon, in France, by the English government in the East Indies, or by any other assassin in modern times. When we read in the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, etc., that they (the Israelites) came by stealth upon whole nations of people, who, as the history itself shews, had given them no offence; that they put all those nations to the sword; that they spared neither age nor infancy; that they utterly destroyed men, women and children; that they left not a soul to breathe; expressions that are repeated over and over again in those books, and that too with exulting ferocity; are we sure these things are facts? are we sure that the Creator of man commissioned those things to be done? Are we sure that the books that tell us so were written by his authority? — Thomas Paine

We're all Poseidon's children, Geoffrey: whether we like it or not."

"Poseidon's children," he repeated. "Is that supposed to mean something?"

"We came through. That's all. We weathered the absolute worst that history could throw at us, and we thrived. Now it's time to start doing something useful with our lives. — Alastair Reynolds

Every frame of a Coen brothers movie is filled with history and meaning, and the deeper you go, the deeper you get. That's why their movies stand up particularly well to repeated viewing and investigation. — Oscar Isaac

It is pointless to ask: Why then is sex so secret? What is this force that so long reduced it to silence and has only recently relaxed its hold somewhat, allowing us to question it perhaps, but always in the context of and through its repression? In reality, this question, so often repeated nowadays, is but the recent form of a considerable affirmation and a secular prescription: there is where the truth is; go see if you can uncover it. [ ... ] It is reasonable therefore to ask first of all: What is this injunction? Why this great chase after the truth of sex, the truth in sex? — Michel Foucault

How many millions of times the sentence 'Life is short' has been repeated in the human history? But nevertheless we all live as if we have millions of years! Oh, how silly! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

He tells of the history of Panem, the country that rose up out of the ashes of a place that was once called North America. He lists the disasters, the droughts, the storms, the fires, the encroaching seas that swallowed up so much of the land, the brutal war for what little sustenance remained. The result was Panem, a shining Capitol ringed by thirteen districts, which brought peace and prosperity to its citizens. Then came the Dark Days, the uprising of the districts against the Capitol. Twelve were defeated, the thirteenth obliterated. The Treaty of Treason gave us the new laws to guarantee peace and, as our yearly reminder that the Dark Days must never be repeated, it gave us the Hunger Games. The — Suzanne Collins

I'm a storyteller; that is what I do. And I'm particularly interested in history; and in history of a certain era. But what is interesting for me is how many, how many things you see repeated. — Jacqueline Winspear

History has repeated itself many times througout the ages. — Billy Sheehan

Science works through replication, rectification and modification. But when it comes to religion, people simply tend to accept the theoretical preachers and their claims of historical God experiences without a single question. If there has been one experience in this world in any branch of knowledge, it absolutely follows that that experience will be repeated eternally. If they are not repeated through natural processes, the thinking humanity would have no way but to disprove that such an experience ever occurred in the history. — Abhijit Naskar

As an immigrant, I appreciate, far more than the average American, the liberties we have in this country. Silence is a big enemy of morality. I don't want our blunders in history to get repeated. — Gloria Estefan

Never in the history of chess have so many moves been repeated so often so quickly by so many people who didn't really understand them. — Michael Stean

You know the saying: he who doesn't understand history is doomed to repeat it. And when it's repeated, the stakes are doubled. — Pittacus Lore

Someone told me recently that a commentator or some sort had said, "The United States is in spiritual free-fall." When people make such remarks, such appalling judgements, they never include themselves, their friends, those with whom they agree. They have drawn, as they say, a bright line between an "us" and a "them." Those on the other side of the line are assumed to be unworthy of respect or hearing, and are in fact to be regarded as a huge problem to the "us" who presume to judge "them." This tedious pattern has repeated itself endlessly through human history and is, as I have said, the end of community and the beginning of tribalism. — Marilynne Robinson

Everything is repeated, in a circle. History is a master because it teaches us that it doesn't exist. It's the permutations that matter. — Umberto Eco

War is a simple matter compared with revolution. War is an applied science, with well-defined principles tested in history; analogous solutions may be found from ballista to H-bomb. But every revolution is a freak, a mutant, a monstrosity, its conditions never to be repeated and its operations carried out by amateurs and individualists. — Robert A. Heinlein