Jean-Henri Merle d'Aubigné (1794–1872) Swiss historian
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 141.
§ 8.18
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)
Jean-Henri Merle d'Aubigné (1794–1872) Swiss historian
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 141.
“If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it long ago.”
William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer
"On the Pleasure of Hating"
The Plain Speaker (1826)
Antonine Maillet (1929) Canadian writer and scholar
Antonine Maillet, Acadian author quoted by Isabel Vincent in the Toronto Globe and Mail, June 24, 1989. Source: Dictionary of Canadian Quotations by Robert Columbo. (Toronto: Stoddart, 1991) p. 3
“We cannot forget what had happened and history should not repeat itself.”
Ba Jin (1904–2005) Chinese novelist
As quoted in Pioneers of Modern China : Understanding the Inscrutable Chinese (2005) by Khoon Choy Lee
Context: Nobody would say the cowshed was heaven and nobody would say the inhuman torture of so many victims be called a revolution of the proletariat. … A museum should be established to remind China of the follies and disasters that had fallen from 1966 to 1976. We cannot forget what had happened and history should not repeat itself.
“History isn't what happened, history is just what historians tell us.”
Julian Barnes (1946) English writer
Source: A History of the World in 10½ Chapters
David Hume book A Treatise of Human Nature
Part 4, Section 1
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 1: Of the understanding
Tad Williams (1957) novelist
Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, To Green Angel Tower (1993), Part 1, Chapter 12, “Raven’s Dance” (p. 392).