Those who have heard me speak from time to time know that quite often I cite the observation of that great American author, Mark Twain, who said, history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
History rarely repeats itself, but its echoes never go away.
I think that as a poet, I am always concerned about history and baring witness to history. But so often, it's through the research that I do, the reading.
History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man.
History has repeated itself many times througout the ages.
History does not repeat itself. Nor does it unfold in cycles. The real future is contingent, rich beyond imagining, a perennial gobsmack, tragic and glorious in equal measure; the pundits' future, spun of 'conventional wisdom,' is only a sucker punch to that common-sense fact.
Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.
This is the lesson that history teaches: repetition.
I feel slightly uneasy at the way historians are consulted as if history is going to repeat itself. It never does.
It is the soothing thing about history that it does repeat itself.
History repeats itself. Historians repeat each other.