“Why can't everybody just get along? No reasonably detached person goes to Israel without being reduced in philosophical discourse to the level of Rodney King—or, for that matter, to the level of George Santayana. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," Santayana said, in one of those moments of fatuousness that come to even the most detached of philosophers. It goes double for those who can't remember anything else. And they do get along, after their fashion. Muslims and Christians and Jews have lived together in the Holy Land for centuries—hating one another's guts, cutting one another's throats, and touching off wars of various magnitudes. The whole melodrama of the Middle East would be improved if amnesia were as common here as it is in melodramatic plots.”

— P. J. O'Rourke

"Zion's Vital Signs" in The Atlantic (November 2001) http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2001/11/o_rourke.htm

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P. J. O'Rourke 185

American journalist 1947

Related quotes

“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

“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

“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

“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.