Ours is the age of substitutes; instead of language, we have jargon; instead of principles, slogans; and, instead of genuine ideas, Bright ideas.
     — Eric Bently (1952)

The further backward you look, the further forward you can see.
     — Winston Churchill

America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.
     —  Georges Clemencaeu

History ... is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
     — Edward Gibbon

The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
     — Edward Gibbon

Every age of the world has increased, and still increases, the real wealth, the happiness, the knowledge, and perhaps the virtue of the human race.
     — Edward Gibbon

We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy.
     — Carl Jung

[re: What have been the consequences of the French Revolution?] It's too early to tell.
     — Mao Tse Tung, attributed

If we do not take the time to review the past we shall not have sufficient insight to understand the present or command the future: for the past never leaves us, and the future is already here.
     — Lewis Mumford

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash our a Word of it.
     — Omar Khayyam, trans. Edward FitzGerald

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
     — George Santayana