W. G. Sebald Quotes

One of the most important reasons for studying history is that virtually every stupid idea that is in vogue today has been tried before and proved disastrous before, time and again.

Everyone must learn from the past.

The only thing history teaches us, a wise man once said, is that history doesn’t teach us anything.

There was not a lot of great Civil War literature written by people who participated in it. It was too traumatic.

The eight men who are survivors of the syphilis study at Tuskegee are a living link to a time not so very long ago that many Americans would prefer not to remember, but we dare not forget. It was a time when our nation failed to live up to its ideals, when our nation broke the trust with our people that is the very foundation of our democracy. It is not only in remembering that shameful past that we can make amends and repair our nation, but it is in remembering that past that we can build a better present and a better future. And without remembering it, we cannot make amends and we cannot go forward…. The United States government did something that was wrong—deeply, profoundly, morally wrong. It was an outrage to our commitment to integrity and equality for all our citizens.

History informs us of past mistakes from which we can learn without repeating them.

All the lessons of history and experience must be lost upon us if we are content to trust alone to the peculiar advantages we happen to possess

History some truths contains, which well may serve for lessons.

Sometimes history reads like a catalogue of post-traumatic stress.

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

I actually studied literature at university, so I'm much more of an arts-based person, but I remember I actually did enjoy physics because you got to do weird experiments. I remember we did this thing with static where we all had to put our hands on this static ball to see that your hair would all stand on end.

I've met many Holocaust survivors who find the era infinitely compelling because they have this deep hunger to understand how it all could possibly have happened.

Germans have an understanding of history and cannot allow themselves to forget it. It may be a curse, but in some ways, it's a blessing. It makes them cautious.

We learn from history. That's what it's all about.

Death inspires me like a dog inspires a rabbit.

Studying the past may suggest new ways of going wrong.

I have on the one hand a hatred and on the other a yearning for Vienna. I left when I was nine years old because I was Jewish. And even before 1938, the anti-Semitism in Austria was probably deeper than it was in Germany or in other European countries.

One has to learn from history. Quite frankly, it is almost impossible to have a sense of vision without a sense of history. If history is learned, then it doesn't have to repeat itself over generations.

The lessons of history teach us - if the lessons of history teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.

It's important to learn the right lessons from the past.

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

Parents don't realize that when they teach you about the Holocaust too early, it ruins you for life.

I went back to a small town in Poland where my dad grew up. It was a very traumatic experience for me as a young man to know that my father's family were killed by Nazis, killed by Hitler. And that left, you know, if not intellectually, at least an emotional part of me which said, God, we have got to do everything we can to end this kind of horrific racism or anti-Semitism. And I have spent much of my life trying to fight that.

Those who fail to learn from the brutal stompings visited on them in the past are doomed to be brutally stomped in the future.

We could learn a lot from the ancients, and we should go back there.