Ignorance of History Quotes

A man who has no sense of history is like a man who has no ears or no eyes.

Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.

Ironically, tendency to ignore inconvenient facts and unwelcome evidence is actually President Reagan's true legacy, as I noted in 'The Nation' back in 2000, before the current right-wing mania for President Reagan gained its full force.

Their very conservatism is secondhand, and they don't know what they are conserving.

Politicians have been downplaying the importance of history as a subject in our schools but, if they had bothered to have a better grasp of history themselves, they might have avoided costly wars. Instead they act like children. The only time that they think matters is their own.

The facile delusions which conceal from us our true situation all amount to this: that we are, or can be, wiser than the wisest men of the past. We are thus induced to play the part, not of attentive and docile listeners, but of impresarios and lion-tamers.

The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present.

Too many people take New York for granted. The primary reason is that history is not taught. That's outrageous in a city where the past is still visible.

President Obama seems completely unaware of how many of the policies he is trying to impose have been tried before, in many times and places around the world, and have failed time and again.

I’m not blind or deaf to the fact that there are those who feel this is a ceremony that should not take place.

People who have got to know Western educational methods always claim that the reading of the Classics was a useless waste of time and should be abolished. Such chatter is to be heard from hundreds of people and cannot be stopped. But it is a serious mistake.

Not to know what happened before means to remain forever a child.

Those silly girls had no idea what they were really celebrating. They had no idea what it took to bring Agatha and her friends together seventy-five years ago. The Women's Society Club had been about supporting one another, about banding together to protect one another because no one else would. But it had turned into an ugly beast, a means by which rich ladies would congratulate themselves by giving money to the poor. And Agatha had let it happen. All her life, it seemed, she was making up for things she let happen.

Ah, Fist, it’s the curse of history that those who should read them, never do.

If you don't know history, it is as if you were born yesterday.

To remain ignorant of history is to remain forever a child

You simply can't understand the present if you don't understand the past. There is no more alarming case study of the consequences of historical ignorance than President Trump.

While politicians may be forgiven for failing to predict the future - who can, alas? - it is amazing that they defiantly ignore the past.

Self-righteous people can talk themselves into forgetting they are part of a civilization. They can then feed on that culture, bringing it down. It's happened many times in the past. It could happen to us.

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

Everyone talks about America, this great country. You hear, "I'm more patriotic than you are. No, I'm more patriotic!" But how few people know the history of this country and how we came into being. That's the part that just amazed me.

It's ignorance, and it's upsetting. Look at the young; they have no idea how great this country is because they never have been outside of it.

Each succeeding civilization forgets its predecessor. Civilizations are ghouls.

It is supposed to true that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. I don't believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and love of blood.

To be ignorant of the past is to be forever a child.