History Will Repeat Quotes & Sayings

Yes, we've seen it all before. And yes, those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it. But no, the sky is not falling - baseball is such a great game that neither the owners nor the players can kill it. After some necessary carnage, market forces will prevail. — John Thorn

History may not repeat itself but, as Mark Twain said, it does rhyme. — Paul Kriwaczek

We're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive. It's pretty dense kids who haven't figured that out by the time they're ten ... Most kids can't afford to go to Harvard and be misinformed. — Kurt Vonnegut

If history is going to repeat itself I should think we can expect the same thing again. — Terry Venables

As Narrative (Novel, Passion), love is a story which is accomplished, in the sacred sense of the word: it is a program which must be completed. For me, on the contrary, this story has already taken place; for what is event is exclusively the delight of which I have been the object and whose aftereffects I repeat (and fail to achieve). Enamoration is a drama, if we restore to this word the archaic meaning Nietzsche gives it: "Ancient drama envisioned great declamatory scenes, which excluded action (action took place before or behind the stage)." Amorous seduction (a pure hypnotic moment) takes place before discourse and behind the proscenium of consciousness: the amorous "event" is of a hieratic order: it is my own local legend, my little sacred history that I declaim to myself, and this declamation of a fait accompli (frozen, embalmed, removed from any praxis) is the lover's discourse. — Roland Barthes

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

History does not repeat itself. Nor does it unfold in cycles. The real future is contingent, rich beyond imagining, a perennial gobsmack, tragic and glorious in equal measure; the pundits' future, spun of 'conventional wisdom,' is only a sucker punch to that common-sense fact. — Rick Perlstein

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

An old adage warns: If you don't know your history, you will be forever condemned to repeat it. Likewise, if you don't know your science fiction, and heed its warnings, you could condemn the Earth to future catastrophe. — Kelly Steed

Why resurrect it all now. From the Past. History, the old wound. The past emotions all over again. To confess to relive the same folly. To name it now so as not to repeat history in oblivion. To extract each fragment by each fragment from the word from the image another word another image the reply that will not repeat history in oblivion. — Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

History doesn't repeat itself, but it harmonizes, and what it usually makes is the devil's music. — Stephen King

Live long enough and nothing is news. 'The News' is
'the new things.' That's fine, until a hundred years go by and you realise there are no new things, only deep structures and cycles that repeat themselves through different period details. — Glen Duncan

History tended to repeat itself.
Why should her past be any different? — Kayla Krantz

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

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

There is no reason to repeat bad history. — Eleanor Holmes Norton

Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. — Edmund Burke

Women with pasts interest men because they hope history will repeat itself. — Mae West

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

I don't grudge them some bodily comforts. It cannot always be Lent. What I cannot stomach is hypocrisy, fraud, idleness - their worn-out relics, their threadbare worship, and their lack of invention. When did anything good last come from a monastery? They do not invent, they only repeat, and what they repeat is corrupt. For hundreds of years the monks have held the pen, and what they have written is what we take to be our history, but I do not believe it really is. I believe they have suppressed the history they don't like, and written one that is favorable to Rome. Henry appears to look straight through him, — Hilary Mantel

He who doesn't understand history is doomed to repeat it. — Pittacus Lore

Well. There was noting to be done for it. Things had happened as they did, time's arrow had yet to be reversed by humans, done was done. If a man spent his life looking over his shoulder at every possible branching of his path he could have taken, he would never accomplish anything. One must learn from history so as not to repeat it, but one must not waste one's energy or time worrying about what might have been. Sorry ... but people die every day and the galaxy continues on quite well without them. Consider yourself lucky you are one of those as yet unselected by the Fates. — Steve Perry

Now the sun is wide awake, baring its teeth, making the sweat run down people's back. Before it will make its way across the sky and into the waiting arms of the Arabian Sea, so much will have happened: migrations into the city, births, marriages, dowry deaths, illicit love affairs, pay raises, first kisses, bankruptcy filings, traffic accidents, business deals, money changing hands, plant shutdowns, gallery openings, poetry readings, political discussions, evictions. Every event in human history will repeat itself today. Everything that ever happened will happen again today. All if life lived in a day. A day, a day. A silver urn of promise and hope. Another chance. At reinvention, at resurrection, at reincarnation. A day. The least and most of all of our lives. — Thrity Umrigar

I've heard it said before that those who don't learn from the past are bound to repeat it, and I just don't know what I think about that. I figure I don't have too much use for it. The past will just weigh on you if you spend too much time remembering it. — Wiley Cash

They say people who
don't learn from history are destined to repeat it. — Susan Mallery

In South Korea, there's a lot of folks who are already saying this deal doesn't go far enough. And I had one source say that President Park will, quote, "get lots of love from D.C. for this" but that the money itself for the fund - $8 million - isn't that much and that the deal itself doesn't ensure that future generations will learn from history so not to repeat it. — Elise Hu

"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

Because we are denied knowledge of our history, we are deprived of standing upon each other's shoulders and building upon each other's hard earned accomplishments. Instead we are condemned to repeat what others have done before us and thus we continually reinvent the wheel. The goal of The Dinner Party is to break this cycle. — Judy Chicago

The oneness of the universe, and the oneness of each element of the universe, repeat themselves to the crack of doom in the creative advance from creature to creature, each creature including in itself the whole of history and exemplifying the self-identity of things and their mutual diversities. — Alfred North Whitehead

Those who don't remember the past are condemned to repeat the eleventh grade. — James W. Loewen

history n. Discipline that, in reminding us that the world existed before we did, creates identity malfunction and is therefore banned from schools along with foreign languages, the province of obstinate and eccentric foreigners.
Those who worry that, if we do not study history, we are doomed to repeat it need not be concerned. Everyone, whether or not he studies history, is doomed to repeat history.
hobby — Rhoda Koenig

History is an ongoing novel, but if we don't learn from what we read and see we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of history. — Tony Brooks

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

I will repeat history over and over. I'm one of those girls where I would just rather beat it into the ground than go through the rest of my life wondering how it would have worked out. — Chelsea Kane

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

History was ignorant and had a mean streak, so it tended to repeat. — Raymond L. Atkins

A bard must know history so she does not repeat it. She tells the tales but is never part of them. She watches but remains above what she sees. She inspires passions in others and rules her own. — David Gaider

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

Time is the most important factor in determining market movements and by studying past price records you will be able to prove to yourself history does repeat and by knowing the past you can tell the future. There is a definite relation between price and time. By studying time cycles and time periods you will learn why market tops and bottoms are found at certain times, and why resistance levels are so strong at certain times, and prices hold around them. The most money is made when fast moves and extreme fluctuations occur at the end of major cycles. — William Delbert Gann

Be not afraid, for all great power throughout the history of humanity has been with the people. From out of their ranks have come all the greatest geniuses of the world, and history can only repeat itself. Be not afraid of anything. You will do marvelous work. — Swami Vivekananda

Listen -

You are not a lonesome freeway with a history
of accidents, or the damaged record of
every pair of palms that tried to unravel you. You are
not a regret, not a letdown. Here you are, living
like a scarlet war - no part of you wants to be
real. This is when you need to open like a bud
to the arms that hold you, even if you prefer to run
from the sun into the shadowy sirens that call
your name like a prayer.

Repeat after me - you are a vessel of roses, and
you wont always be in bloom, but I promise that
the frost never stays for long. I promise that the
light will find you. — Bianca Sparacino

The example given by the Nazi regime as to the ability of a modern state to destroy human lives with the same techniques used by modern industry, employing the bureaucratic apparatus readily available to any modern state, is one that can hardly be ignored. Because although history may not repeat itself, it is rare that anything introduced to human history is not used again. Whether the Holocaust was unique or not in terms of its precedents is one question; whether it will remain so is quite another. — Omer Bartov

Nearly all the writing of our time is likely to disappear in a hundred years. Certainly most readers - and nearly all critics - feel that [Kurt] Vonnegut started to repeat himself, to grow increasingly self-indulgent and meandering, and to sometimes just blather in his later work. But his books up to "Slaughterhouse-Five" do possess a distinctiveness that will insure some kind of permanence, if only in the history of the 1960s and of science fiction. — Michael Dirda

The truly apocalyptic view of the world is that things do not repeat themselves. It isn't absurd, e.g., to believe that the age of science and technology is the beginning of the end for humanity; that the idea of great progress is delusion, along with the idea that the truth will ultimately be known; that there is nothing good or desirable about scientific knowledge and that mankind, in seeking it, is falling into a trap. It is by no means obvious that this is not how things are. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

I repeat that dogmatics is not a thing which has fallen from Heaven to earth. And if someone were to say that it would be wonderful if there were such an absolute dogmatics fallen from Heaven, the only possible answer would be: 'Yes, if we were angels.' But since by God's will we are not, it will be good for us to have just a human and earthly dogmatics. The Christian Church does not exist in Heaven, but on earth and in time. And although it is a gift of God, He has set it right amid earthly and human circumstances, and to that fact corresponds absolutely everything that happens in the Church. The Christian Church lives on earth and it lives in history, with the lofty good entrusted to it by God. In the possession and administration of this lofty good it passes on its way through history, in strength and in weakness, in faithfulness and in unfaithfulness, in obedience and in disobedience, in understanding and in misunderstanding of what is said to it. — Karl Barth

When I was in school I studied biology. I learned that in making their experiments scientists will take some group
bacteria, mice, people
and subject that group to certain conditions. They compare the results with a second group which has not been disturbed. This second group is called the control group. It is the control group which enables the scientist gauge the effect of his experiment. To judge the significance of what has occurred. In history there are no control groups. There is no one to tell us what might have been. We weep over the might have been, but there is no might have been. There never was. It is supposed to be true that those who o not know history are condemned to repeat it. I don't believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood and this is a thing that even God
who knows all that can be known
seems powerless to change. — Cormac McCarthy

The day we forget the horror, Sam, we will repeat it. Never forget your past. It will make you less human, less than human. — Katherine Reay

As we were told about others, so others will be told about us. that is "HISTORY". and the most painfull thing about it is that, it does not repeat itself. it comes onece in life and never again. — Hamzat Haruna Ribah

The official report was a collection of cold, hard data, an objective "after-action report" that would allow future generations to study the events of that apocalyptic decade without being influenced by the "human factor." But isn't the human factor what connects us so deeply to our past? Will future generations care as much for chronologies and casualty statistics as they would for the personal accounts of individuals not so different from themeslves? By excluding the human factor, aren't we risking the kind of personal detachment from a history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? — Max Brooks

Nobody would say the cowshed was heaven and nobody would say the inhuman torture of so many victims be called a revolution of the proletariat ... A museum should be established to remind China of the follies and disasters that had fallen from 1966 to 1976. We cannot forget what had happened and history should not repeat itself. — Ba Jin

History gives us a kind of chart, and we dare not surrender even a small rushlight in the darkness. The hasty reformer who does not remember the past will find himself condemned to repeat it. — John Buchan

If you don't learn about each other, you do not understand each other, and you don't hide warts and all, both sides, then you're forever going to repeat history. — Warren Mundine

History was one of the things that Eric studied, both professionally and personally. He was an advocate of the expression that one must learn from history or be doomed to repeat it, though in his less optimistic moments he felt that if one did learn from history then you were doomed to watch others repeat it. Humanity, honestly, did very little that didn't disappoint him as a whole. — Evan Currie

In history, and in evolution, progress is always a futile, Sisyphean struggle to stay in the same relative place by getting ever better at things. Cars move through the congested streets of London no faster than horse-drawn carriages did a century ago. Computers have no effect on productivity because people learn to complicate and repeat tasks that have been made easier. — Matt Ridley

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. — George Santayana

I'm trying to preach the idea that if we don't pay attention to history we're destined to repeat it. — Clint Eastwood

If you are not open to the unprecedented, you will repeat history. If you are open to the unprecedented, you will change history. The difference is prayer. — Mark Batterson

Mitch
"
"All right, baby, I'll shut you up."
Then he did, his head slanting and his lips taking mine in a repeat performance of the open-mouthed, knock my socks off, rock my world, best kiss in the history of all time. — Kristen Ashley

Could it be that simple? Tell one story to one generation and repeat it until it was accepted as fact? — Kiera Cass

The feeling of the supremacy of general over particular, of law over fact, of theory over personal experience, took root in my mind at an early age and gained increasing strength as the years advanced. It was the town that played the major role in shaping this feeling, a feeling which later became the basis for a philosophic outlook on life. When I heard boys who were studying physics and natural history repeat the superstitious notions about "unlucky" Monday, or about meeting a priest crossing the road, I was utterly indignant. I felt that my intelligence had been insulted, and I was on the verge of doing any mad thing to make them abandon their shameless superstitions. — Leon Trotsky

Those who don't know history may be bound to repeat it. But even people who know it may follow the same fate if they interpret it exclusively in their own favor. — Yanko Tsvetkov

I am gay. I am a Jew. My mother lost over a dozen of her family to Hitler's anti-Semitism. Every time in Russia (and it is constantly) a gay teenager is forced into suicide, a lesbian 'correctively' raped, gay men and women beaten to death by neo-Nazi thugs while the Russian police stand idly by, the world is diminished and I for one, weep anew at seeing history repeat itself. — Stephen Fry

I discovered that all these rulers were men. What they had in common was an avaricious and distorted personality, a never-ending appetite for money, sex and unlimited power. They were men who sowed corruption on the earth, and plundered their peoples, men endowed with loud voices, a capacity for persuasion, for choosing sweet words and shooting poisoned arrows. Thus, the truth about them was revealed only after their death, and as a result I discovered that history tended to repeat itself with a foolish obstinacy. — Nawal El Saadawi

Let me repeat what history teaches. History teaches. — Gertrude Stein

We read history in order not to have to repeat it. — Inge Scholl

We may repeat the awful revolutionary history of the 20th century because of the vulnerability of social movements to demagoguery. — Todd Gitlin

Nothing changes; we humans repeat the same sins over and over, eternally. — Isabel Allende

We are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, and no amount of education gleaned from our propensity for self-destruction and misguided thinking ever teaches us anything. Not anything that we remember for more than a generation or two.
I think maybe we learn a few things each time that we don't forget. A few things that stick with us. It's just hard to pass those things on to those who come after us because if they didn't live through it, they don't view it the same way we do. If you don't experience something firsthand, it's a lot harder to accept. Terry Brooks, Bearers of the Black Staff, p 89 — Terry Brooks

Could God have justified Himself before human history, so full of suffering, without placing Christ's Cross at the center of that history? ... But God, who besides being Omnipotence is Wisdom and
to repeat once again
Love, desires to justify Himself to mankind. He is not the Absolute that remains outside of the world, indifferent to human suffering. he is Emmanuel, God-with-us, a God who shares man's lot and participates in his destiny. — Pope John Paul II

With Pauline at my side, in one swift act that could never be undone, an act that ended a thousand dreams but gave birth to one, I bolted for the cover of the forest and never looked back. Lest we repeat history, the stories shall be passed from father to son, from mother to daughter, for with but one generation, history and truth are lost forever. - Morrighan Book of Holy Text, Vol. III — Mary E. Pearson

Those who do not forgive history are assigned to repeat it until compassion replaces judgment. — Alan Cohen

But history does repeat itself; that is the comedy and the crime of history. Men learn nothing. Times change. Scenes change. Names change. But passions are the same. — Carlos Fuentes

Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it. — Edmund Burke

The world had seen the same thing happen many times before. After it happened in Nazi Germany, all the big, powerful countries swore, "Never again!" But here we were, six harmless females huddled in darkness, marked for execution because we were born Tutsi. How had history managed to repeat itself? How had this evil managed to surface once again? Why had the devil been allowed to walk among us unchallenged, poisoning hearts and minds until it was too late? — Immaculee Ilibagiza

I cannot too often repeat that Democracy is a word the real gist of which still sleeps, quite unawakened, notwithstanding the resonance and the many angry tempests out of which its syllables have come, from pen or tongue. It is a great word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten because that history has yet to be enacted. — Walt Whitman

The philosopher and historian George Santayana once remarked that those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. A perusal of some of the essays will reveal that this is not always true. In some cases psychologists have known about mistakes of the past and sought to repeat them. But the recurrence can sometimes be fruitful: going round in circles can be a good thing, provided the circle is large that when one returns to the task one sees it in a new light and the error brings new insights. — Noel Sheehy

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

Never stop reading. History doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme. — Seth Klarman

We must not let history repeat itself in Iraq. The reality is there is no military solution in Iraq. This is a sectarian war with long standing roots that were flamed when we invaded Iraq in 2003. Any lasting solution must be political and take into account respect for the entire Iraqi population. — Barbara Lee

When, as my friend suggested, I stand before Zeus (whether I die naturally, or under sentence of History)I will repeat all this that I have written as my defense.Many people spend their entire lives collecting stamps or old coins, or growing tulips. I am sure that Zius will be merciful toward people who have given themselves entirely to these hobbies, even though they are only amusing and pointless diversions. I shall say to him : "It is not my fault that you made me a poet, and that you gave me the gift of seeing simultaneously what was happening in Omaha and Prague, in the Baltic states and on the shores of the Arctic Ocean.I felt that if I did not use that gift my poetry would be tasteless to me and fame detestable. Forgive me." And perhaps Zeus, who does not call stamp-collectors and tulip-growers silly, will forgive. — Czeslaw Milosz

Silent evidence pervades everything connected to the notion of history. By history, I don't mean just those learned-but-dull books in the history section (with Renaissance paintings on their cover to attract buyers). History, I will repeat, is any succession of events seen with the effect of posteriority.
This bias extends to the ascription of factors in the success of ideas and religions, to the illusion of skill in many professions, to success in artistic occupations, to the nature versus nurture debate, to mistakes in using evidence in the court of law, to illusions about the "logic" of history
and of course, most severely, in our perception of the nature of extreme events. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Don't ever let anyone tell you that history doesn't repeat. For 70 years, liberals have been spinning the yarn that FDR's New Deal, despite all the evidence that it exacerbated and prolonged the Great Depression, quickened our economic recovery. Indeed, I remember scratching my head when one of my college history professors in the 1970s tried to convince us of that theory and its corollary - an even better howler - that FDR was actually a conservative, because if he hadn't implemented his socialist programs, the republic would have died right there. — David Limbaugh

History does seem to repeat itself hence it's mindboggling to still hear the 'avoid all negative people' speeches from, of all people, supposedly important spiritual teachers. Ironically, their congregations would probably be the ones hiding their faces from the accuracies of truth speakers like Christ. Now, Christ was the complete opposite of negative, however the danger is that truth is often misunderstood as negativity by those who are constantly taught to only seek flattery. — Criss Jami

History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes. — Anthony Robbins