>>>"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."<<<
A misquotation of something Santayana said more or less as an aside, which is misused to rebuke people for not knowing enough about history:
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
—Life of Reason, Reason in Common Sense, Scribner's, 1905, p. 284
Santayana's original comment was just an observation that undeveloped human beings, like animals and other organisms, have no culture or history (as far as we know--who knows what whales may pass on). So all they can do is to repeat what their genes program them to do. Human beings also do this to a lesser or greater degree. But to the extent that an organism's culture enables it remember the past, it is at least possible to learn something from it and to escape from inevitable repetition.
Here's the original context:
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted, it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience. |
