History Repeats Quotes & Sayings

Unlike most people, Peter didn't look to the future for reassurance; he understood that the only thing certain in life is the past. History repeats itself again and again, and every story has been told before. It seemed to him that life could be terribly unoriginal in that way, and the only manner of certainty
the only way to know what might be ahead
was to look back on what had already happened. — Jennifer E. Smith

I put the truth out there, I put the historical facts into Hip Hop to show us how much history repeats itself and that if we truly want to evolve as a human race, we need to stop sticking each other in ridiculous categories. — Immortal Technique

History repeats the old conceits, the glib replies, the same defeats. — Elvis Costello

The reason that history so often repeats is not only human nature, but also human ignorance. — Glenn Beck

Maybe your history just repeats and repeats until it batters you enough to snap the seams that hold you together — David Levithan

Great civilizations have annihilated themselveswhen the development of their spiritual wisdom lagged far behind their scientific technology. We need to walk softly, for though we have tread upon the surface of the moon, we have remained bigots and arrogant egotists. Walk softly, for history repeats its self with little provacation. — Mary Summer Rain

While history never repeats itself, political patterns do. — Eric Alterman

History is a raw onion sandwich, it just repeats, it burps. We've seen it again and again this year. Same old story, Same old oscillation between tyranny and rebellion, war and peace, prosperity and impoverishment — Julian Barnes

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. — Karl Marx

History repeats itself is another way of saying the past harmonizes. — Stephen King

Like the seasons of the year, like history, truth also repeats itself. But we seldom recognize it when great poets or true artists - the prophets and the priests of our day - present it to us in garments spick and span, following the fashion of the age, the slant of its fancy, the turn and temper of its mind. — Ameen Rihani

History never repeats itself, historians do. — Lee Benson

Time does stop sometimes, you see everyone passing by, following their destiny and the destination it is leading, and you conclude its better where you are then moving again ... often history repeats itself before it changes ... — Prashant

History never exactly repeats itself, but it does some rather good impressions. — John Dean

History repeats itself because nobody listens the first time. — Erik Qualman

History repeats itself, in part because the genome repeats itself. And the genome repeats itself, in part because history does. The impulses, ambitions, fantasies, and desires that drive human history are, at least in part, encoded in the human genome. And human history has, in turn, selected genomes that carry these impulses, ambitions, fantasies, and desires. This self-fulfilling circle of logic is responsible for some of the most magnificent and evocative qualities in our species, but also some of the most reprehensible. It is far too much to ask ourselves to escape the orbit of this logic, but recognizing its inherent circularity, and being skeptical of its overreach, might protect the week from the will of the strong, and the 'mutant' from being annihilated by the 'normal'. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

History, we know, is apt to repeat itself. — George Eliot

I've been completely fascinated with history because it tells everything about what's going to happen next because it's cyclical, everything repeats in general. — Emilie Autumn

History repeats itself, you sang. I wonder if that's true. If there's a hurt
that's buried in us, maybe it keeps fi nding its way through. — Ava Dellaira

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. — Karl Marx

I can dig out the old chestnut from George Santayana, that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," but it serves no purpose. It's a hopelessly optimistic quote. We are condemned to repeat the past whether we remember it or not. It is inevitable; just ask Nietzsche (eternal return) or Hegel (history repeats itself) or James McCourt (history repeats itself like hiccups). — Rabih Alameddine

Silence ensures that history repeats itself. — Erin Gruwell

History may not repeat, but it often rhymes. — Mark Twain

The saying goes that history repeats itself; personal histories do the same. We can gather the lessons of others' lives through observation, conversation, and by seeking advice. We can use the automatic system to find out who the happy people are, and the reflective system to evaluate how they got to be that way. Pursuing happiness need not be a lonely endeavor. In fact, throwing in our lot with others may be a very good way of coping with the disappointments of choice. — Sheena Iyengar

A revival almost always begins among the laity. The ecclesiastical leaders seldom welcome reformation. History repeats itself. The present leaders are too comfortably situated as a rule to desire innovation that might require sacrifice on their part. And God's fire only falls on sacrifice. An empty altar receives no fire! — Frank Bartleman

History repeats itself when it does not feel heard. — Christine Edwards

Still, as a kid, History Repeats Itself terrified me, mostly because I was a God-fearing child. And I mean that literally. God scared me stiff, what with the turning human beings into salt and getting them swallowed up by whales, plus the locusts and famines and, not least, making sure his own kid gets nailed to death onto wood. Every time someone would die - a cousin or grandparent or Elvis - some relative preacher would there-there it away by saying that God has a plan, and we simply have no way of knowing what that plan is. But we did know. We learned about His plan every week at Sunday school. It's called Armageddon! — Sarah Vowell

That history almost always repeats itself. And it is almost always written by men. — Ally Carter

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

History repeats itself, and that's one of the things that's wrong with history. — Clarence Darrow

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

"The Universe repeats itself, with the possible exception of history." Of all earthly studies history is the only one that does not repeat itself ... Astronomy repeats itself; botany repeats itself; trigonometry repeats itself; mechanics repeats itself; compound long division repeats itself. Every sum if worked out in the same way at any time will bring out the same answer ... A great many moderns say that history is a science; if so it occupies a solitary and splendid elevation among the sciences; it is the only science the conclusions of which are always wrong. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Again Serena's frustrations, her disappointments, exist within a system you understand not to try to understand in any fair-minded way because to do so is to understand the erasure of the self as systemic, as ordinary. For Serena, the daily diminishment is a low flame, a constant drip. Every look, every comment, every bad call blossoms out of history, through her, onto you. To understand is to see Serena as hemmed in as any other black body thrown against our American background. "Aren't you the one that screwed me over last time here?" she asks umpire Asderaki. "Yeah, you are. Don't look at me. Really, don't even look at me. Don't look my way. Don't look my way," she repeats, because it is that simple. — Claudia Rankine

Every time the diaphragm winks, the camera repeats the question that now travels through cyberspace and invades, as a modern virus, the memories of machines, men and women. The question that history sets forth. The question which forces us to define ourselves and whose answer makes us human: On which side are you? — Subcomandante Marcos

I've said it before, history repeats itself for those who don't learn from the past. Can we please learn from all this? Please? Or is everyone waiting for yet another savior to come along and charm them Hollywood style if freedom is still around for America's next election? — L.M. Fields

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

History sometimes reproduces, at a distance of many years, the same combinations of circumstances that generate great achievements. But nothing ever repeats itself in exactly the same way. — Valerio Massimo Manfredi

History that repeats itself turns to farce. Farce that repeats itself turns to history. — Jean Baudrillard

History rarely repeats itself, but its echoes never go away. — Tariq Ali

this is not allegory. I have no gospel unless this is history. In addition, I have been pointing out that as well as being a literal historical record of something that actually happened, Genesis 3 is also, in the most amazing way, an account and a description of the very thing that happens to us one by one. For the astounding fact is that every one of us repeats the action of Adam and Eve. — D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

History never repeats itself. Man always does. — Voltaire

Philosophy which asserts that human experience repeats itself is ineffectual. — Jacques Ellul

If history really forever repeats itself: then, it has always been then. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

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

History repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird. — Joseph Conrad

History is only a tiresome repetition of one story. — William Graham Sumner

Surely it is foolish to hate facts. The struggle against the past is a futile struggle. Acceptance seems so much more like wisdom. I know all this. And yet there are some facts that one must never, never accept. This is not merely an emotional matter. The reason that one must hate certain facts is that one must prepare for the possibility of their return. If the past were really past, then one might permit oneself an attitude of acceptance, and come away from the study of history with a feeling of serenity. But the past is often only an earlier instantiation of the evil in our hearts. It is not precisely the case that history repeats itself. We repeat history - or we do not repeat it, if we choose to stand in the way of its repetition. For this reason, it is one of the purposes of the study of history that we learn to oppose it. — Leon Wieseltier

History repeats itself. Historians repeat each other.
[1880] — Max Beerbohm

History, like wallpaper, repeats itself and can also make a room look old-fashioned. — Demetri Martin

History repeats itself. Someone says this.
History throws its shadow over beginning, over the desktop, over the sock drawer with its socks, its hidden letters.
history is the little man in a brown suit trying to define a room he is outside of,
I know history. There are many names in history ... but none of them are ours. — Richard Siken

History always repeats itself — Gerald J. Kubicki

Many codependents, at some time in their lives, were true victims - of someone's abuse, neglect, abandonment, alcoholism, or any number of situations that can victimize people. We were, at some time, truly helpless to protect ourselves or solve our problems. Something came our way, something we didn't ask for, and it hurt us terribly. That is sad, truly sad. But an even sadder fact is that many of us codependents began to see ourselves as victims. Our painful history repeats itself. As caretakers, we allow people to victimize us, and we participate in our victimization by perpetually rescuing people. Rescuing or caretaking is not an act of love. — Melody Beattie

The world is not likely to tire of an amusement which never repeats itself, of a game which today presents features as novel and charms as fresh as those with which it delighted, in the morning of history, the dwellers on the banks of the Ganges and Indus. — Willard Fiske

What's the story here, Karl?' Kevin asked.
'Hard as it is to believe, these people are slaves,' Karl explained.
'Slaves?' I asked skeptically.
'Well, you might not call them that but they are virtual slaves. They don't receive any pay. They are dealt with harshly. They don't have anywhere else to go'
'What about the government? Don't they help?' Marcus asked.
'The government?' Karl laughed. 'The government my eye! Those generals stay in power several years, make a bundle smuggling drugs, and once they're millionaires, they retire. Some other lousy generals take over from them, and history repeats itself. You think they give a shit what happens to a few lousy Indians? — Yossi Ghinsberg

"History repeats itself" and "History never repeats itself" are about equally true ... We never know enough about the infinitely complex circumstances of any past event to prophesy the future by analogy. — G. M. Trevelyan

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

History repeats, but science reverberates. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

History repeats itself, but in such cunning disguise that we never detect the resemblance until the damage is done. — Sydney J. Harris

Remember that history always repeats itself. Every great bubble in history has broken. There are no exceptions. — Jeremy Grantham

History never repeats itself; at best it sometimes rhymes. — Mark Twain

The early and relatively sophisticated Egyptians understood that their civilization would be threatened if they bred with the Negroes to their south, so pharaohs went so far as "to prevent the mongrelization of the Egyptian race" by making it a death penalty-eligible offense to bring blacks into Egypt. The ancient Egyptians even constructed a fort on the Nile in central Egypt to prevent blacks from immigrating to their lands. In spite of the efforts by the Egyptian government to defend their civilization, blacks still came to Egypt as soldiers, slaves, and captives from other nations. By 1,500 B.C., half of the population of southern Egypt was of mixed blood, and by 688 B.C., societal progress had ended in Egypt when Taharka became the first mulatto pharaoh. By 332 B.C., Egypt had fallen when Alexander the Great conquered the region. — Kyle Bristow

History never repeats itself," said Voltaire; "man always does." Thucydides, — Barbara W. Tuchman

I think [James] Joyce sometimes enjoyed misleading his readers. He said to me that history was like that parlor game where someone whispers something to the person next to him, who repeats it not very distinctly to the next person, and so on until, by the time the last person hears it, it comes out completely transformed. Of course, as he explained to me, the meaning in Finnegans Wake is obscure because it is a 'nightpiece.' I think, too, that, like the author's sight, the work is often blurred. — Sylvia Beach

Man is a parrot in the House of History; he listens and then he repeats the same crap over and over! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

History repeats itself. That's one of the things wrong with history. — Clarence Darrow

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

If history repeats itself, I am so getting a dinosaur! — Anonymous

Was it really worth it? I wondered again.

I wanted to believe it had been but could not help feeling cynical about how history repeats itself. There still were the same political intrigues, the hate groups that thrive on terror and human misery and I knew that there were enough egos and self-indulging crusaders to fuel another war, and another... — Helene Deschamps-Adams

History repeats. — Pippa DaCosta

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

We could start, perhaps, with the seemingly simple question, What is History? Any thoughts, Webster?' 'History is the lies of the victors,' I replied, a little too quickly. 'Yes, I was rather afraid you'd say that. Well, as long as you remember that it is also the self-delusions of the defeated. Simpson?' Colin was more prepared than me. 'History is a raw onion sandwich, sir.' 'For what reason?' 'It just repeats, sir. It burps. We've seen it again and again this year. Same old story, same old oscillation between tyranny and rebellion, war and peace, prosperity and impoverishment.' 'Rather a lot for a sandwich to contain, wouldn't you say?' We laughed far more than was required, with an end-of-term hysteria. 'Finn?' '"History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation." ' 'Is it, indeed? Where did you find that?' 'Lagrange, sir. Patrick Lagrange. He's French. — Julian Barnes

We are condemned to repeat the past whether we remember it or not. It is inevitable; just ask Nietzsche (eternal return) or Hegel (history repeats itself) or James McCourt (history repeats itself like hiccups). Beirutis — Rabih Alameddine

History repeats itself but without a parity bit — Nauman Khan

Some say, 'Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.' I say, 'Those who ignore history are in for a big surprise.' — Stephen Colbert

For every written history, there is a silenced part of it, that is left to remain untold and undiscovered until history repeats itself. — Joon Mier Da Mienta

All of us know history repeats itself, but mighty few of us recognize the repetition until too late. — Kenneth Roberts

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

The history of the genesis or the old mythology repeats itself in the experience of every child. He too is a demon or god thrown into a particular chaos, where he strives ever to lead things from disorder into order. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience. — George Bernard Shaw

You see how strangely history repeats itself.Here and now in Bosnia we are seeing images like those of the second world war. I remember that war very well.I was 16 when it began ,and 20 when it ended . Then,too, there were Chentniks and Ustasha,and they are again.the difference is that these Chetniks are worse than the Chetniks of that time,these Ustasha worse than those Ustasha.I can say this with complete confidence ,because Ustasha of that time didn't destroy the Old Bridge ,nor the mosques of Mostar ,and these have done so. — Alija Izetbegovic

Those who know nothing about history are doomed forever to repeat it. — Will Durant

Each time history repeats itself, the price goes up. — Ronald Wright

[N]ot only is the most marvellous event in this book collaborated by plain facts of the present day, but that these marvels (like all marvels) are mere repetitions of the ages. — Herman Melville

When you don't change, history repeats itself. Then you have to decide if changing is for the best, or you keep seeing repeats because you're doing something right. — Rebecca McKinsey

All I know is that history repeats itself and people are going to want to experience the world. But I know then they are going to have a better appreciation for what is here in Maine. — John Baldacci

History never repeats itself - but historical situations recur." As — Arthur C. Clarke

For us to change history, we first need to change the future. — Anthony Liccione