A Quote by Will Durant

History repeats itself in the large because human nature changes with geological leisureliness.

Will Durant

Quote Topics

Because Changes Geological History History Repeats Itself Human Human Nature Itself Large Nature Repeats

Quote Author

Will Durant
American - Historian
November 5, 1885 - November 7, 1981

"The Universe repeats itself, with the possible exception of history." Of all earthly studies history is the only one that does not repeat itself. ... Astronomy repeats itself; botany repeats itself; trigonometry repeats itself; mechanics repeats itself; compound long division repeats itself. Every sum if worked out in the same way at any time will bring out the same answer. ... A great many moderns say that history is a science; if so it occupies a solitary and splendid elevation among the sciences; it is the only science the conclusions of which are always wrong.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Human nature, if it changes at all, changes not much faster than the geological face of the earth.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

History repeats itself and History never repeats itself are about equally true.

G. M. Trevelyan

"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.

G. M. Trevelyan

The reason that history so often repeats is not only human nature, but also human ignorance.

Glenn Beck

History repeats itself because nobody listens the first time.

Erik Qualman

Stories are there to be told, and each story changes with the telling. Time changes them. Logic changes them. Grammar changes them. History changes them. Each story is shifted side-ways by each day that unfolds. Nothing ends. The only thing that matters, as Faulkner once put it, is the human heart in conflict with itself. At the heart of all this is the possibility, or desire, to create a piece of art that talks to the human instinct for recovery and joy.