"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
"Memory itself is an internal rumour; and when to this hearsay within the mind we add the falsified echoes that reach us from others, we have but a shifting and unseizable basis to build upon. The picture we frame of the past changes continually and grows every day less similar to the original experience which it purports to describe."
6 likes
Source: George Santayana (2015). “The Life of Reason: Human Understanding”, p.375, 谷月社
About the author
Same author
More quotes by George Santayana
"To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring."
"Do not have evil-doers for friends, do not have low people for friends: have virtuous people for friends, have for friends the best of men."
"There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval."
"The passions grafted on wounded pride are the most inveterate; they are green and vigorous in old age."
"Each religion, by the help of more or less myth, which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny."