“We start from scratch, every generation. History does not bend inevitably toward justice, or freedom, or decency, or even stability. History doesn’t do that in Hong Kong, or in Moscow, or in Washington or New York City or Los Angeles. History goes where we push it. And if we don’t push, someone else will.”
2020s
Source: "The End of (Whig) History" https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/the-end-of-whig-history/?taid=5efd8dac17654f00015ab42c&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter (1 July 2020), National Review
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Kevin D. Williamson 11
American writer 1972Related quotes
“Love starts when we push aside our ego and make room for someone else.”
“We learn from history that we do not learn from history.”
Speech to the United States House of Representatives (July 2015)
“Sometimes - history needs a push.”
Source: Yuen Kwok-yung (2020) cited in " Coronavirus: community outbreak declared in Hong Kong as government prepares to quarantine mainland Chinese entering city in hotels and facilities https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/3049297/coronavirus-community-outbreak-declared-hong-kong" on South China Morning Post, 6 February 2020.
Chiu Chui-cheng (2019) cited in " Taiwan could issue travel alert for Hong Kong if proposed extradition update passes https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/03/25/taiwan-issue-travel-alert-hong-kong-proposed-extradition-update-passes/" on Hong Kong Free Press, 25 March 2019
“We learn from history that we don't learn from history!”
Often attributed to Desmond Tutu, actual source is G. W. F Hegel: What experience and history teach is this — that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it. Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1832)
Misattributed
“Our histories cling to us. We are shaped by where we come from.”