The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.

 

The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.
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Also quoted as "History does not repeat itself, It rhymes" and "History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes a lot."
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According to this notes on sourcing, Twain scholars agree that it sounds like something he would say, but they have been unable to find the actual quote in his writing.
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Twain did write: "It is not worth while to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man's character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible." (Mark Twain in Eruption: Hitherto Unpublished Pages About Men and Events (1940), ed. Bernard DeVoto, pp. 66–67).

 

Mark Twain

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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

 

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

 

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

 

The same piece of music alters at each hearing. But oh, the need to repeat and repeat and repeat unchanged the sexual experience.

 

Ned Rorem