#477: Twain on “History Repeating Itself”

“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.”

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* Mark Twain in Eruption: Hitherto Unpublished Pages About Men and Events (1940) edited by Bernard DeVoto | https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910),[1] known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was lauded as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced,"[2] and William Faulkner called him "the father of American literature".[3] His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884),[4] the latter often called "The Great American Novel". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain

#476: History Repeating?

"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. The essential causes of Rome’s decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars."*

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* Will Durant, Caesar and Christ, Epilogue, p. 665 (1944)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Civilization
William James Durant (November 5, 1885 – November 7, 1981) was an American historian and philosopher, best known for his 11-volume work, The Story of Civilization, which contains and details the history of Eastern and Western civilizations. It was written in collaboration with his wife, Ariel Durant, and published between 1935 and 1975. He was earlier noted for The Story of Philosophy (1926), described as "a groundbreaking work that helped to popularize philosophy".[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Durant