Chuck Palahniuk Quotes

It is not worthwhile to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man’s character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible.

Even if we remember the past, odds are good we'll still repeat it.

Most people, including myself, keep repeating the same mistakes.

But the development of human society does not go straight forward; and the epic process will therefore be a recurring process, the series a recurring series - though not in exact repetition.

There's this Indian fellow who worked out a cycle like the idea of stone-age, bronze-age, only he did it on an Indian one. The cycle goes from nothing until now and 20th century and then on and right around the cycle until the people are really grooving and then just sinks back into ignorance until it gets back into the beginning again. So the 20th century is a fraction of that cycle, and how many of those cycles has it done yet? It's done as many as you think and all these times it's been through exactly the same things, and it'll be this again.

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history 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.

Every time history repeats itself the price goes up.

Orthodoxy is a corpse that doesn't know it's dead.

The most important actors of a scenario never ask for that scenario to be changed; neither do they seek developments that would end their roles.

The more you read about history, the more you realize that there is nothing new under the sun.

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.

'Awkward' implies both solidarity and implication. Nobody is exempt.

I think history is just so cyclical.

Whatever has happened in your past, it's - you can never deny it. I mean, you can never wash what's happened before in your life out of you.

The people and places that cause terror in childhood cause attraction in adulthood. We end up being repetitively attracted to the same kind of person that obliges us by acting out the same behavior over again.

We just feel like history repeats itself. You ain't never going to see nothing brand new; you're only going to see when records are broken. And we're here to just set records and set trends and follow the footsteps that have been shown to us.

There's nothing worse than the guy who at the party goes, 'Oh, I had that idea two years ago.' Well, then, why didn't you do something two years ago?

Because we've always done it that way.' During my 12-year tenure as a special agent with the U.S. Secret Service, I heard those words all too often. The agency, in my experience, has an entrenched management culture resistant to change.

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.

The reason why you do history, and particularly why you do war, is that you want to make sure that in the next war, some lessons were learned. There's a saying: "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Or Ecclesiastes: "What has been will be again. What has been done will be done again." Human nature always superimposes itself - its strength and its frailty over the rush of chaos of ongoing events - and we can perceive patterns and themes and motifs.

All new news is old news happening to new people

It suddenly occurred to me that every move on the chessboard is old and has been played by somebody at some time. Maybe our own history has been played out by somebody at some time, and we just move our pieces about in the same moves to strike in the same way as people have always done.

History, we know, is apt to repeat itself, and to foist very old incidents upon us with only a slight change of costume.

So I left him there alone to watch history repeat the same events retold again and again on his own.