“I had made vows and to spare, but the present cannot be ruled forever by the past.”
Tanith Lee book Quest for the White Witch
Book Two, Part II “White Mountain”, Chapter 3 (p. 283)
Quest for the White Witch (1978)
Source: Fear and Trembling
“I had made vows and to spare, but the present cannot be ruled forever by the past.”
Tanith Lee book Quest for the White Witch
Book Two, Part II “White Mountain”, Chapter 3 (p. 283)
Quest for the White Witch (1978)
“Remember that neither the future nor the past pains thee, but only the present.”
Marcus Aurelius book Meditations
VIII, 36
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VIII
Context: Remember that neither the future nor the past pains thee, but only the present. But this is reduced to a very little, if thou only circumscribest it, and chidest thy mind, if it is unable to hold out against even this.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to compute it.”
Steven Pinker book Words and Rules
Source: Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism
This famous statement has produced many paraphrases and variants:
Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember their past are condemned to repeat their mistakes.
Those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it.
Those who fail to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors are destined to repeat them.
Those who do not know history's mistakes are doomed to repeat them.
There is a similar quote by Edmund Burke (in Revolution in France) that often leads to misattribution: "People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors."
The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905-1906), Vol. I, Reason in Common Sense
Source: The Life of Reason: Five Volumes in One
Context: Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
“The present enshrines the past—and in the past all history has been made by men.”
Simone de Beauvoir book The Second Sex
Introduction : Woman as Other http://books.google.com/books?id=kUW0AAAAIAAJ&q=%22The+present+enshrines+the+past+and+in+the+past+all+history+has+been+made+by+men%22&pg=PA122#v=onepage <br class="br">The Second Sex (1949)
William Pfaff (1928–2015) American journalist
Source: Barbarian Sentiments - How The American Century Ends (1989), Chapter 1, Dead Stars, p. 3.
Yasser Harrak Canadian liberal writer, columnist and human rights activist
Yasser Harrak. 2015. "Understanding Why ISIS Burns People Alive". Youtube. Accessed December 24, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTc2KwANKX0