Quotes & Sayings About History Repeating Itself

There is no prophecy in our day but history. But history is a trustworthy prophet. History is always repeating itself, because conditions are always repeating themselves. Out of duplicated conditions history always gets a duplicate product. — Mark Twain

Is it only in the army in the Philippines that Americans sometimes commit deeds that cause all other Americans to regret?
[Theodore Roosevelt 1901 relating reports of water torture in the Philippines to lynching in the south] — Theodore Roosevelt

Why did I write it? Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of madness, the immense, terrifying madness that had erupted in history and in the conscience of mankind? Was it to leave behind a legacy of words, of memories, to help prevent history from repeating itself? Or was it simply to preserve a record of the ordeal I endured as an adolescent, at an age when one's knowledge of death and evil should be limited to what one discovers in literature? There — Elie Wiesel

Now, at this very minute, a political philosophy foreign to it is being pressed on the South, and the South's not ready for it - we're finding ourselves in the same deep waters. As sure as time, history is repeating itself, and as sure as man is man, history is the last place he'll look for his lessons. I hope to God it'll be a comparatively bloodless Reconstruction this time. — Harper Lee

It is not worth while to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man's character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible. — Mark Twain

The music of all the different media of life-memories, images, feeling-tones, poetic-musical connotations of phrasing-is kaleidoscopic and doesn't repeat itself or recur. -People who think they are trapped in a river of regularized and ever-repeating time are merely the victims of their own ordinarizing minds that have elaborated for them a prison-cell of everydayness. The fountains of time, history, life, inspiration, etc. are fresh every instant, if one knows how to grasp them with some finesse: every instant within natural, historical, and personal time is unique. — Kenny Smith

Maybe history wouldn't have to repeat itself if we listened once in awhile. — Wynne McLaughlin

... the vintage of history is forever repeating ~ same old vines, same old wines! — E.A. Bucchianeri

There are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns. Patterns hidden by patterns. Patterns within patterns.
If you watch close, history does nothing but repeat itself.
What we call chaos is just patterns we haven't recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can't decipher. what we can't understand we call nonsense. What we can't read we call gibberish.
There is no free will.
There are no variables. — Chuck Palahniuk

We may want to believe that previous world wars and economic depressions have awakened people from their deep sleep, but they didn't and that's why history keeps repeating itself. — Daniel Marques

History is the most patient of teachers. If Man doesn't get the lesson, it keeps repeating itself until he finally gets it. — Christian Adam Ribeiraud

In the 'Disruptive Broadcasting' space, TV on IP networks is now just another application in a broadband world. We have already seen the transformation of the computing and communications industry with respect to traditional telecom. Now, history is repeating itself with traditional broadcasting. — Jeff Pulver

History, with all her volumes vast, hath but one page — George Gordon Byron

History repeats itself and that's just how it goes, — J. Cole

History repeating itself is history's oldest story. — Steve Wick

Aldersgate Street, the bottom of the A1 - which was the modern designation of the original Great North Road, built by the Romans two thousand years ago to march its garrisons to the very edge of the empire three hundred miles to the north. Their duty was to reinforce Hadrian's Wall, keeping the outer darkness at bay and the empire safe. — Peter F. Hamilton

Art, when destroyed can never be replaced, yet history repeats itself. — Clarence H. Burns

History always has a way of repeating itself and like in Nazi Germany 1930's ... those who have been given the divine privilege to protect humanity can never afford to turn blind to the evil in our world that destroys its children (Young or old). — Timothy Pina

If history has a habit of repeating itself, doesn't someone have to stay behind to shout out a warning? — Jodi Picoult

History repeats itself. As do the methods used by those specializing in the elimination of leaders who unite people into a strong force for dignity, justice and self-determination. — S.M. Sigerson

We're going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we're doing, you can say, We're remembering. That's where we'll win out in the long run. And someday we'll remember so much that we'll build the biggest goddamn steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in it and cover it up. — Ray Bradbury

The problem with revolutions is that they always end right where they begin. — Matthew Catania

Humans are capable of so much more. Power mongers like you have stripped away what is most valuable to us, the importance of our heritage and family values. We have been robbed of this, blinded by your authority, while you encourage us to burry ourselves in debt and rely on our corrupt governments. Men and women around the world have been forced to work long hours to keep up with inflated debts, all the while abandoning the families they struggle to support. History repeats, and repeats. It's time to break the cycle and start anew. — Aaron B. Powell

The concerns and methods vary, but there is to it all, at bottom, a message that is unmistakably Luddistic: beware the technological juggernaut, reckon the terrible costs, understand the worlds being lost in the world being gained, reflect on the price of the machine and its systems on your life, pay attention to the natural world and its increasing destruction, resist the seductive catastrophe of industrialism. — Kirkpatrick Sale

If there were ever such a thing as a unique opinion, history would probably be less inclined to repeat itself. — Gavin Mills

Maybe if people started to listen, history would stop repeating itself. — Lily Tomlin

A third layer of nativeness was composed of those whom others thought directly descended, even the tiniest fraction of their genes, from the human beings who had been brought from Africa centuries ago as slaves. While this layer of nativeness was not vast in proportion of the rest, it had vast importance, for society had been shaped in reaction to it. An unspeakable violence had occurred in relation to it, and yet it endured, fertile, a stratum of soil that perhaps made possible all future transplanted soils. — Mohsin Hamid

But the past does not exist independently from the present. Indeed, the past is only past because there is a present, just as I can point to something over there only because I am here. But nothing is inherently over there or here. In that sense, the past has no content. The past
or more accurately, pastness
is a position. Thus, in no way can we identify the past as past." p. 15
" ... But we may want to keep in mind that deeds and words are not as distinguishable as often we presume. History does not belong only to its narrators, professional or amateur. While some of us debate what history is or was, others take it into their own hands." p. 153
Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995) — Michel-Rolph Trouillot

As sure as time, history is repeating itself, and as sure as man is man, history is the last place he'll look for his lessons. — Harper Lee

History is constantly repeating itself, making only such changes of programme as the growth of nations and centuries requires. — James A. Garfield

The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence — T. S. Eliot

Dark, was banned by the Irish state censor for obscenity. The story was set, as so much of McGahern's later fiction would be, in isolated rural Ireland and dealt with the bleak consequences of parental and clerical child abuse. On the instructions of the Archbishop of Dublin, McGahern was sacked from his job as a primary school teacher. He later left the country. Despite these apparent setbacks, McGahern's literary friends reassured him that all this was a wonderful opportunity in terms of publicity and sales. Remember Joyce and Beckett being forced overseas? This was Irish literary history repeating itself, and preparations were soon being made to mount a campaign against the anachronistic and widely derided censorship laws with McGahern as the figurehead.
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McGahern agreed that the situation was indeed absurd, and says that even as an adolescent reader he had nothing but contempt for the censorship board. — John McGahern

People are always quick to call evil what they do not know. The unknown sprouts fear. It spreads like an infection, burrowing into every facet of their lives. They need a scapegoat, someone to blame. Fingers are pointed, accusations are made, and a target lands on somebody's back. They grow angry. They turn violent.
To history, human nature must be a stubborn and tiring student. No matter how many times history tries to show it the error of its ways, it never learns from its mistakes. — Kelseyleigh Reber

Time and time over it is the ones who try a little too hard to be innovative rebels - and for the sheer glory of being considered innovative rebels - who then turn out not quite as innovative or as rebellious as they would like to think they are. — Criss Jami

How in hell did those bombers get up there every single second of our lives! Why doesn't someone want to talk about it! We've started and won two atomic wars since 2022! Is it because we're having so much fun at home we've forgotten the world? Is it because we're so rich and the rest of the world's so poor and we just don't care if they are? I've heard rumors; the world is starving, but we're well fed. Is it true, the world works hard and we play? Is that why we're hated so much? I've heard the rumors about hate too, once in a long while, over the years. Do you know why? I don't, that's sure! Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damn insane mistakes! — Ray Bradbury

War without end.

Well, what was history without that?

And how would having the stars change anything? — James S.A. Corey

It's not history repeating itself in Gaza, it's horror repeating itself — Dean Cavanagh

History repeats itself over and over again, but most of us have short memories. — Mike Colter

You would think bearing witness to something like this would make a difference, and yet this isn't so. In the newspapers I have read about history repeating itself in Cambodia. Rwanda. Sudan. — Jodi Picoult

History repeating itself, he thought. Lessons learned long ago so often needed to be learned all over again in the present. It might true here, and he might be the student who was being taught. — Terry Brooks

For more than a decade, the United States had been giving large-scale military aid to the French colonialists, and then to the American-installed but authoritarian South Vietnamese government, to fight nationalists and communists in Vietnam. More than 23,000 U.S. military advisers were there by the end of 1964, occasionally engaging in combat. On the other side of the world, the American public knew and cared little about the guerrilla war. In fact, few knew exactly where Vietnam was. Nevertheless, people were willing to go along when their leaders told them that action was essential to resist communist aggression. — Edward S. Greenberg

That is the key to history. Terrific energy is expended - civilizations are built up - excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and the cruel people to the top and it all slides back into misery and ruin. — C.S. Lewis

You are not responsible for the past, but insofar as you do nothing, you are complicit in the present created by it. — Jonathan R. Miller

Those who stand for different causes during different generations often experience the same oppositions and the same difficulties as those of the previous and the next generations. That is the basis of history repeating itself. — Criss Jami

The only lesson you can learn from history is that it repeats itself — Bangambiki Habyarimana

Human history seems to me to be one long story of people sweeping down - or up, I suppose - replacing other people in the process. — Alexander McCall Smith

So the story of man runs in a dreary circle, because he is not yet master of the earth that holds him. — Will Durant

Will this generation be able to turn things around and learn a valuable lesson from all of this? I hope so, but I have my doubts. The damage has been done. And as a lifelong student of history, it's quite evident that human beings don't learn from the mistakes of past generations. — Aaron B. Powell

Totalitarian solutions may well survive the fall of totalitarian regimes in the form of strong temptations which will come up whenever it seems impossible to alleviate political, social, or economic misery in a manner worthy of man. — Hannah Arendt

I presumably lost $150,000 in the depression of 1937 - on my one stock investment - because I did everything Lehman Brothers told me. I said, well, this is a fool's procedure ... buying stock in other people's businesses. — Studs Terkel

Again, Syd had that feeling, the past as an echo, repeating itself as it faded. The poor had longed for Jubilee to save them from the powerful, and now the one-time patrons longed for the Machine to do the same. Every revolution believes it can return something that had been lost, but nothing is ever the same. The only thing that endures are people. Syd saw that clearly now, and perhaps so too did Marie. You could serve a revolution, an idea that ended up an echo if itself, or you could serve people, with their maddening contradictions. You couldn't serve both. You had to choose. — Alex London

It is not often that nations learn from the past,even rarer that they draw the correct conclusions from it. — Henry Kissinger

Disregard for the past will never do us any good. Without it we cannot know truly who we are. — Syd Moore

Events had been set in motion whose echo would be heard a thousand and more generations from now. — J. Valor

I am more and more impressed with the possibilities of history's repeating itself on many different counts. You don't get very far in Wall Street with the simple, convenient conclusion that a given level of prices is not too high. — Benjamin Graham

History repeats itself in the large because human nature changes with geological leisureliness. — Will Durant

Any person who considers himself, and intends to remain, a member of Western society inherits the Western past from Athens and Jerusalem to Runnymede and Valley Forge, as well as to Watts and Chicago of August 1968. He may ignore it or deny it, but that does not alter the fact. The past sits back and smiles and knows it owns him anyway. — Barbara W. Tuchman

...but the power of spilled blood overwhelmed the good intentions of those who wanted to end the violence. — Jeffrey Goldberg

Gamora: History repeating itself?
Warlock: History doesn't repeat itself, Gamora, but sometimes it rhymes. — Dan Abnett

But all historians, one may say without exception, and in no half-hearted manner, but making this the beginning and end of their labour, have impressed on us that the soundest education and training for a life of active politics is the study of History, and that surest and indeed the only method of learning how to bear bravely the vicissitudes of fortune, is to recall the calamities of others. — Polybius

Ignorance and its denial will, sad to say, lead us down the same road as it did in all past history. — Jordan Maxwell

History is always repeating itself, but each time the price goes up. — Will Durant

Resentment is a powerful and corrosive force, both on the slippery left and the slippery right, and the history of humankind can largely be read as a history of resentment. Aside from a profound philosophy of capital, what we really need is a profound psychology and philosophy of resentment. We must learn to live for ourselves, without reference to the other, and, at the same time, to rise above and beyond ourselves. Or else history will keep repeating itself, and our life will be a living death. — Neel Burton

I have seen a stunning amount of death and destruction. Creation yes, but more death than birth. Mankind has learned nothing from their forefathers. Their ancestors. It is true what they say: history does repeat itself, Delacroix, and those after history are left to make it, but how can they," he removed his hand from the globe, waving it thoughtfully through the air, "when it has already been made? — S.C. Parris

I spend every day showing people the power of history. But history only has the power you give it. — Brad Meltzer

A nation which fails to adequately remember salient points of
its own history, is like a person with Alzheimer's. And that can be a
social disease of a most destructive nature. — S.M. Sigerson

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