It is not worthwhile to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man’s character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910
History may not repeat, but it often rhymes.
A democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.
The lessons of history would suggest that civilisations move in cycles. You can track that back quite far - the Babylonians, the Sumerians, followed by the Egyptians, the Romans, China. We're obviously in a very upward cycle right now, and hopefully that remains the case. But it may not.
Civilizations come and go; they conquer the earth and crumble into dust; but faith survives every desolation.
I think history is just so cyclical.
Nations and empires flourish and decay, By turns command, and in their turns obey.
The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.
The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years.
The worst of revolutions is a restoration.
Throughout the world Dark Ages have scrawled finis to successions of cultures receding far into the past.
What makes human power erupt like a volcano? What destroy's it? The civilizations of Rome, Greece, Egypt, China were all eruptions from a human core.
Does history repeat itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce? No, that's too grand, too considered a process. History just burps, and we taste again that raw-onion sandwich it swallowed centuries ago.
History usually repeats but it can be changed.
States have their conversions and periods as well as naturall bodies.
Civilization is perhaps approaching one of those long winters that overtake it from time to time. Romantic Christendom - picturesque, passionate, unhappy episode - may be coming to an end. Such a catastrophe would be no reason for despair.
Everything in culture moves in a cyclical way.
There's a cyclical nature to what people like in the world. Through time, things come around again.
I see the future of China as growth. I think that historically China has often gone through periods of consolidation, and then periods of sort of weakening central authority. They undoubtedly face tremendous challenges.
History repeats itself. So you might wanna pay attention.
Civilizations evolve over time, and most scholars of civilization, including people like Carol Quigley, argue that they go through periods of warring states, and eventually evolve into a universal state.
"History repeats itself" and "History never repeats itself" are about equally true ... We never know enough about the infinitely complex circumstances of any past event to prophesy the future by analogy.
History, we know, is apt to repeat itself.
History is always repeating itself, but each time the price goes up.
All history consists of successive excursions from a single starting-point, to which man returns again and again to organize yet another search for a durable scale of values.
