“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.”

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)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Aug. 5, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has t…" by Aldous Huxley?
Aldous Huxley photo
Aldous Huxley 290
English writer 1894–1963

Related quotes

Newton Lee photo
Jimmy Carter photo

“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
Presidency (1977–1981), 1978

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel photo

“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.”

Introduction, as translated by H. B. Nisbet (1975)
Variant translation: What experience and history teach is this — that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.
Pragmatical (didactic) reflections, though in their nature decidedly abstract, are truly and indefeasibly of the Present, and quicken the annals of the dead Past with the life of to-day. Whether, indeed, such reflections are truly interesting and enlivening, depends on the writer's own spirit. Moral reflections must here be specially noticed, the moral teaching expected from history; which latter has not unfrequently been treated with a direct view to the former. It may be allowed that examples of virtue elevate the soul, and are applicable in the moral instruction of children for impressing excellence upon their minds. But the destinies of peoples and states, their interests, relations, and the complicated tissue of their affairs, present quite another field. Rulers, Statesmen, Nations, are wont to be emphatically commended to the teaching which experience offers in history. But what experience and history teach is this, that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it. Each period is involved in such peculiar circumstances, exhibits a condition of things so strictly idiosyncratic, that its conduct must be regulated by considerations connected with itself, and itself alone. Amid the pressure of great events, a general principle gives no help. It is useless to revert to similar circumstances in the Past. The pallid shades of memory struggle in vain with the life and freedom of the Present.
Lectures on the History of History Vol 1 p. 6 John Sibree translation (1857), 1914
Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1832), Volume 1

Steven Erikson photo

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

Source: Deadhouse Gates

James A. Garfield photo

“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
1870s

Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo
Jonah Goldberg photo

“Keeping Germany from acting too German (or at least too Prussian) is an important lesson of history.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

"Nationalism and Nationism" https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/nationalism-debate-nation-states/ (3 April 2019), National Review
2010s, 2019

Max Müller photo

“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)

Related topics