Ten Quotes on History

It must be the then-and-now photos of two unemployed persons from two historical eras, which I posted over the weekend in my other blog, that enticed me to read more about the Great Depression. The experience is, to say the least, enlightening and illuminating.

But disturbing, too, in the sense that it gave me a sense of foreboding about a likely future that is slowly unfolding much like a replay of an old familiar movie. I hope it's just my overworked mind playing a trick on me, for it's a future we'd rather not have.

Join me as I explore quotes from wise and famous men who have attempted to explain why history seems to uncannily repeat itself:

Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who ever have been, and ever shall be, animated by the same passions, and thus they necessarily have the same results. -Machiavelli

* * *

History teaches everything including the future. -Lamartine

* * *

The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes. -Mark Twain

* * *

We learn from history that we never learn anything from history. -Hegel

* * *

While the mediocre European is obsessed with history, the mediocre American is ignorant of it. -Anonymous

* * *

If history teaches anything about the causes of revolution--and history does not teach much but still teaches considerably more than social science theories--it is that a disintegration of political systems precedes revolutions, that the telling symptom of disintegration is a progressive erosion of governmental authority, and that this erosion is caused by the government's inability to function properly, from which spring the citizens' doubts about its legitimacy. -Hannah Arendt

* * *

You must always know the past, for there is no real Was, there is only Is. -William Faulkner

* * *

Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature. -David Hume

* * *

History has now been for the first time systematically considered, and has been found, like other phenomena, subject to invariable laws. -August Comte

* * *

History repeats itself because no one was listening the first time. -Anonymous

(Photo credit: www.sxc.hu)

Print