Cyclical History Quotes

You know that old phrase ‘Those who don’t remember the past are condemned to repeat it’? Well, I think those who remember the past are even worse off.

I think history is just so cyclical.

Nations and empires flourish and decay, By turns command, and in their turns obey.

Even if we did achieve what we wanted with a very small state, we'd just be resetting the clock back to 1776, and it would roll forward exactly the same way again.

Every civilization carries the seeds of its own destruction, and the same cycle shows in them all. The Republic is born, flourishes, decays into plutocracy, and is captured by the shoemaker whom the mercenaries and millionaires make into a king. The people invent their oppressors, and the oppressors serve the function for which they are invented.

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.

And the first till last alshemist wrote over every square inch of the only foolscap available, his own body, till by its corrosive sublimation one continuous present tense integument slowly unfolded all marryvoising moodmoulded cyclewheeling history.

History repeats itself in the large because human nature changes with geological leisureliness.

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

We lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves; yet when we achieved, and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to re-make in the likeness of the former world they knew.

History should teach humility and prudence, but America doesn’t seem to learn. I’ve never seen a virgin who loses her innocence more often.

I see history as really cyclical in terms of the intense idealism, and the desire to create a better life outside of societal norms.

The lesson of history is that no one learns.

It's becoming very much like 1979 again.

You'd like to think we're past certain things, the way we treat people. I thought we were at a time where you love your neighbor as yourself. But as I've studied history - it hasn't repeated itself necessarily, but it's dressed a little different and is acting the same.

Part of why history is so important in my life is because it brings you an awareness that everything isn't new. It gives context to what's happening right now. History is cyclical but circumstances and technology change. So when social justice topics come up, they're not new. They're just being covered more. We have more ways to record it now.

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

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

I keep thinking that history runs in cycles, and that some day certain large issues will come before the country again. There will be leaders that inspire young people. I don't think it means that it's over forever, but I'm getting pretty impatient. I'm hoping it comes soon, so that my young people can know that experience that we knew in the '60s, and that the World War II generation knew during the '40s.

I see history as really cyclical in terms of the intense idealism and the desire to create a better life outside of societal norms. In America, possibly because of whatever the American dream is, this happens over and over again. These eras repeat.

Look to the past and remember no empire rises that sooner or later won't fall.

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

The current generation now sees everything clearly, it marvels at the errors, it laughs at the folly of its ancestors, not seeing that this chronicle is all overscored by divine fire, that every letter of it cries out, that from everywhere the piercing finger is pointed at it, at this current generation; but the current generation laughs and presumptuously, proudly begins a series of new errors, at which their descendants will also laugh afterwards.

Some knowledge and some song and some beauty must be kept for those days before the world again plunges into darkness.