Errol Morris Quotes

Those unable to catalog the past are doomed to repeat it.

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

I don't think you can erase history.

If you don't pay attention to history, you're destined to repeat it.

Santayana's aphorism must be reversed: too often it is those who can remember the past who are condemned to repeat it.

It's been my experience, Langford, that the past always has a way of returning. Those who don't learn, or can't remember it, are doomed to repeat it.

Without knowing your own history, you are doomed to repeat it.

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

Even before I had had time to really think things through, I realized we must not forget. If all of us forgot, the same thing might happen again, in 20 or 50 or 100 years.

If you don't remember history accurately, how can you learn?

The past has an undeniable grip on everyone, except, perhaps, amnesiacs.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility.

Those who try to obliterate the past are injuring the present.

Never, ever forget history.

There are moments in history that people should be reminded of.

Wont to unlearn from history, we aptly repeat even its most brazen mistakes.

The bells cease, and the power goes from me, and I descend again to the world of the living; and if in some foolish confiding moment I try to explain why I want to re-live those old days, to tear the Truth out of the past so that all men shall see plainly, perhaps someone will say to me, 'Oh, the War! A tragedy - best forgotten.'

History repeats itself because no one listens the first time.

Only by not forgetting the past can we be the master of the future.

There is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence of it.

We have to learn from the past.

Why are some things remembered and others forgotten? That is the theme I want to pursue about the Second World War.

The past is the one thing we are not prisoners of. We can do with the past exactly what we wish. What we can't do is to change its consequences.

As long as we fail to face up to the past and deal with it accordingly, the future will smack of corruption.

People have an annoying habit of remembering things they shouldn't.