“What experience and history teaches us is that people and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”
“Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of the government. The history of government is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is the history of the limitation of government, not the increase of it.”
“Experience teaches is such a lovely saying. However, when people try not to make the mistakes of what history and experience has taught, they are criticized for it. They are told that because they have not experienced it, they cannot appreciate it, and thus never know it. However, at the same time, people want you to learn from past mistakes and past experiences, in order to make a better choice for yourself. So let me ask you, which is the hypocrite? Is it history or is it today?”
“If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us. But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives us is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us.”
“When you learn from experience and history, and try to walk down a different road, the present always reminds you that you need to walk down the road that experience and history did. This is why no one learns from experience and history.”
“What we learn from history is that we do not learn from history”