George Bernard Shaw Quotes

The lesson of history is that no one learns.

Unfortunately, we don't seem to learn from history, do we? And you'd think we would.

What experience and history teach is this — that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

I think if we don't understand history, if we don't keep referring back to it, we become complacent. And complacency, as we all know, it leads to repeating history.

Is the only lesson of history to be that mankind is unteachable?

Papa Hegel he say that all we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. I knew people who can't even learn from what happened this morning. Hegel must have been taking the long view.

Man seems to insist on ignoring the lessons available from history.

History is cyclical, and it would be foolhardy to assume that the culture wars will never return.

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

God knows why nobody ever learns from the preceding generation - but they don't.

Introspection and preserved writings give us far more insight into the ways of past humans than we have into the ways of past dinosaurs. For that reason, I'm optimistic that we can eventually arrive at convincing explanations for these broadest patterns of human history.

Men do not learn much from the lessons of history and that is the most important of all the lessons of history.

I've got news for Mr. Santayana: we're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive.

Progress is man’s indifference to the lessons of history.

Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

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.

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.

Each generation thinks it fights new battles. But the battles are the same. Only the people are different.

The lesson of history is rarely learned by the actors themselves.

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

If all human beings understood history, they might cease making the same stupid mistakes over and over.

Naturally, every age thinks that all ages before it were prejudiced, and today we think this more than ever and are just as wrong as all previous ages that thought so. How often have we not seen the truth condemned! It is sad but unfortunately true that man learns nothing from history.

What we learn from history is that people don't learn from history.

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

We learn nothing from history except the infinite variety of men's behaviour.