“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

—  Benjamin Graham , book The Intelligent Investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Benjamin Graham photo
Benjamin Graham 64
American investor 1894–1976

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George Santayana photo

“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.

“Those who don't remember the past are condemned to repeat the eleventh grade.”

James W. Loewen (1942) American historian

Source: 1990s Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (1995), p. 1

Chuck Palahniuk photo

“You know that old phrase ‘Those who don’t remember the past are condemned to repeat it’? Well, I think those who remember the past are even worse off.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. photo

“Santayana's aphorism must be reversed: too often it is those who can remember the past who are condemned to repeat it.”

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (1917–2007) American historian, social critic, and public intellectual

The Bitter Heritage: Vietnam and American Democracy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966) p. 91

Errol Morris photo

“Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Really? Human nature being what it is, isn't it hopeless to expect that we can do better regardless of whether we remember anything or not? And what if what we remember leads us to false analogies and misunderstandings? I prefer: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility."”

Errol Morris (1948) American filmmaker and writer

Or how about this: "Those who cannot condemn the past repeat it in order to remember it."
Source: The Grump (no. 1) http://www.errolmorris.com/content/grump/grump1.html

Steven Pinker photo

“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

“Santayana was probably wrong when he said that those who forget the past are condemned to relive it. Those who remember are condemned to relive it too.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

Ibid.
Essays and reviews

Hakim Bey photo

“Those who understand history are condemned to watch other idiots repeat it.”

Hakim Bey (1945) American political writer, poet and essayist
Sara Shepard photo

“Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it”

Sara Shepard (1973) Author

Source: Wanted

Sung-Yoon Lee photo

“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.

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