"What history teaches us is that neither nations nor governments ever learn anything from it." Hegel
Exactly. I have absolutely no patience with anyone who talks about the lessons of history. There are none. I studied history and can vouch for this.
"The only lesson history teaches is that history teaches no lessons." A.J.P. Taylor
The lessons drawn from history and put into practice are always mistaken. For example the lesson we have drawn from the Nazis is that ethnically mixed societies are ipso facto good things rather than ipso facto volatile things.
George W. Bush drew the wrong lessons from World War II by attacking Iraq, as did Eden over Suez, but Eden was very much less wrong than Bush.
Perhaps the difference between drawing the right and wrong lessons is how things turn out after you put the lessons into practice.
As A.J.P. Taylor also said, we learn from the mistakes of the past to make new mistakes in the future.
Sir Max Beerbohm in 1896:
“'History,' it has been said, 'does not repeat itself. The historians repeat one another.'"
"It was Quintilian or Mr. Max Beerbohm who said, “History repeats itself: historians repeat each other.” The saying is full of the mellow wisdom of either writer, and stamped with the peculiar veracity of the Silver Age of Roman or British epigram. One might have added, if the aphorist had stayed for an answer, that history is rather interesting when it repeats itself: historians are not." Philp Guedalla
ReplyDeleteJuliet Evans: What history teaches us is that technology changes the world.
ReplyDeleteThat's true. Adrianople was the first city to be bombed in 1913 unless you count the bomb dropped from a hot air balloon over Venice in 1848.
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