cyclical nature of history Quotes

All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again.

Does history repeat itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce? No, that's too grand, too considered a process. History just burps, and we taste again that raw-onion sandwich it swallowed centuries ago.

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.

There are two things that have been true throughout history in big hunks. You can find differences in ten years, but in 50 year hunks, 100 years hunks, you'll find two things to be true. One, the world is always getting better. Two, people always think it's getting worse.

History, we know, is apt to repeat itself.

History is always repeating itself, but each time the price goes up.

History repeats itself and that's just how it goes.

History repeats itself, but in such cunning disguise that we never detect the resemblance until the damage is done.

I am more and more impressed with the possibilities of history's repeating itself on many different counts. You don't get very far in Wall Street with the simple, convenient conclusion that a given level of prices is not too high.

History repeats herself.

The lesson of history is that no one learns.

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

I felt that the world, and in particular this country, were going in circles. What had happened 40 or 50 years ago was happening again, but even in a worse form - that we were sinking into a lot of ignorance and a lot of superficial change.

History repeats itself and History never repeats itself are about equally true.

O time, swift robber of all created things, how many kings, how many nations hast thou undone, and how many changes of states and of various events have happened since the wondrous forms of this fish perished here in this cavernous and winding recess. Now destroyed by time thou liest patiently in this confined space with bones stripped and bare; serving as a support and prop for the superimposed mountain.

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 that repeats itself turns to farce. Farce that repeats itself turns to history.

It's all a play. Hiroshima and Nagasaki happen, there are hundreds of thousands of dead, and the curtain comes down, and that's the end of that. Then Korea happens. Vietnam happens, all that happened in Latin America happens. And every now and then, this curtain comes down and history begins anew. New moralities and new indignations are manufactured...in a disappeared history.

It was the hubris of each generation to think this anew, to think that their time was special, that all things would come to an end with them.

History is only a tiresome repetition of one story.

The reason that history so often repeats is not only human nature, but also human ignorance.

Everything is cyclical. Historical eras go through times of intense cynicism, broken by periods of intense idealism.

Maybe your history just repeats and repeats until it batters you enough to snap the seams that hold you together

Nothing's new since Genesis. And so everybody in their life thinks history began when they were born. Most people's historical perspective happened when they were born in the sense that nothing has ever been this bad. "We've never gone before this before," and of course we have. Things have been worse in many ways in the country.