“Probably, the most-often-repeated lesson in history is that foreigners who are called in to help one side in a civil war take over for themselves. It is a lesson that seems never to be learned despite endless repetition.”

The Dark Ages (1968), p. 188
General sources

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Probably, the most-often-repeated lesson in history is that foreigners who are called in to help one side in a civil wa…" by Isaac Asimov?

Isaac Asimov303

American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston Uni… 1920–1992

Related quotes

“The lesson of History is rarely learned by the actors themselves.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

Letter to Professor Demmon (16 December 1871), in The Life and Public Services of James A. Garfield (1881) by E. E. Brown, p. 424 http://books.google.com/books?id=vCAFAAAAYAAJ <br class="br">1870s

“The lesson of history is that no one learns.”

Steven Erikson book Deadhouse Gates

Source: Deadhouse Gates

“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Source: " A Case of Voluntary Ignorance http://www.christiebooks.com/ChristieBooksWP/2013/11/a-case-of-voluntary-ignorance-by-aldous-huxley/" in Collected Essays (1959)

“The two sides (Mainland China and Taiwan) should learn a lesson from history and never fight each other again.”

Andrew Hsia (1950) Taiwanese politician

Source: Andrew Hsia (2015) cited in " Hsia, Zhang evoke the past at Taiwan-China meeting http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aipl/201505230020.aspx" on Focus Taiwan, 23 May 2015.

“Yes I was burned but I called it a lesson learned. Mistake overturned so I call it a lesson learned. My soul has returned so I call it a lesson learned… another lesson learned”

Alicia Keys (1981) American singer-songwriter, pianist, and actress

“The so-called lessons of history are for the most part the rationalizations of the victors. History is written by the survivors.”

Max Lerner (1902–1992) American journalist and educator

It Is Later Than You Think: The Need for a Militant Democracy http://books.google.com/books?id=szVGoBq-dkEC&q=%22actually+The+so-called+lessons+of+history+are+for+the+most+part+the+rationalizations+of+the+victors+history+is+written+by+the+survivors%22&pg=PA255#v=onepage (1939)

“That there should be wars between nations who learned their first lessons in citizenship from the same mother seems to me fratricidal insanity.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Classical Association (8 January 1926), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 107.
1926
Context: Believing as I do that much of the civilisation and culture of the world is bound up with the life of Western Europe, it is good for us to remember that we Western Europeans have been in historical times members together of a great Empire, and that we share in common, though in differing degrees, language, law, and tradition. That there should be wars between nations who learned their first lessons in citizenship from the same mother seems to me fratricidal insanity.

“The lessons of the most traumatic past must be learned and continually relearned, not only to prevent such a tragedy from repeating itself, but also to honor, as one nation, those who made our freedom possible, and to remember that freedom is certainly never free”

Sung-Yoon Lee Korea and East Asia scholar, professor

Context: For many South Koreans today, the Korean War is little more than a tragedy of the past or a tale in abstraction. For others, it is a trauma best forgotten. But on Memorial Day, the South Koreans, as a nation, must not forget the suffering and sacrifice in their national historical experience. The lessons of the most traumatic past must be learned and continually relearned, not only to prevent such a tragedy from repeating itself, but also to honor, as one nation, those who made our freedom possible, and to remember that freedom is certainly never free.

“History teaches, perhaps, very few clear lessons. But surely one such lesson learned by the world at great cost is that aggression, unopposed, becomes a contagious disease.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Speech on Afghanistan (4 January 1980) http://millercenter.org/president/carter/speeches/speech-3403 <br class="br">Presidency (1977–1981), 1978

“You could never teach other people anything that mattered. The important things they had to learn for themselves, almost always by making mistakes, so that the lessons arrived too late to help. Experience was in that sense useless. It was precisely what could not be passed along in a lesson or an equation.”

Kim Stanley Robinson book Galileo's Dream

Source: Galileo's Dream (2009), Ch. 20, p. 513–514

“Probably, the most-often-repeated lesson in history is that foreigners who are called in to help one side in a civil war take over for themselves. It is a lesson that seems never to be learned despite endless repetition.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Isaac Asimov303

Related quotes

Related topics