"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
"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."
35 likes
Source: George Santayana (2011). “The Life of Reason: Introduction and Reason in Common Sense”, p.172, MIT Press
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."