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I've got news for Mr. Santayana: we're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive.
--
p. 91, referring to George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"

 

Kurt Vonnegut

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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." Or how about this: "Those who cannot condemn the past repeat it in order to remember it."

 

Errol Morris

 

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

 

In an incredibly short time, we have been turned into a nation without heroes, without pride in our past or knowledge of either our past triumphs or our past follies and disasters. We are like an amnesia patient, waking up in the hospital ward, with both past and future great blank spaces stretching behind and before us, doomed to repeat mistakes we do not even know we have already made. (p. 62-63)

 

Peter Hitchens

 

I'm confused about who the news belongs to. I always have it in my head that if your name's in the news, then the news should be paying you. Because it's your news and they're taking it and selling it as their product. But then they always say that they're helping you, and that's true too, but still, if people didn't give the news their news, and if everybody kept their news to themselves, the news wouldn't have any news. So I guess you should pay each other. But I haven't figured it out fully yet.

 

Andy Warhol

 

In my vision, I aim not to repeat the mistakes of the past, but to forge a new path. To repeat the mistakes of the past is to cease to evolve.

 

Doctor Steel