history repeats itself

history repeats itself

1. Things that have happened in the past will or tend to happen again in one way or another.
   • 1871, The Edinburgh review, or Critical Journal, →OCLC, page 486:

     If it be true that history repeats itself, then assuredly a narrative of domestic trials, of political emergencies, and of religious animosities can never be out of date, since men and women still bear in their hearts, passions as vindictive, a patriotism as ardent, and, let us hope, a piety as sincere as distinguished, in the sixteenth century, Philip and Charlotte du Plessis de Mornay.

   • 1962, Kendig Brubaker Cully, Confirmation: History, Doctrine, and Practice, →OCLC, page 152:

     If history repeats itself, so does religious experience. As the story of the Church unfolds, the individual finds himself as part of the providential purpose of God within the realm in which the living God reigns.

   • 2016, Jeanette Baxter, J.G. Ballard's Surrealist Imagination, →ISBN:

     In other words, Ballard's pseudo-scientific tales remap social history's penchant for psychoanalysing the impact of historical atrocity (World War II) by deflecting it onto another historical disaster (Vietnam). Only, history repeats itself in Ballard's text with one crucial, contemporary difference: in 'Love and Napalm: Export USA' it is no longer the combatant, the active participant of war, who comes under psychological scrutiny, but the passive spectators