Historic recurrence

Mark Twain: "a favorite theory of mine [is] that no occurrence is sole and solitary, but is merely a repetition of a thing which has happened before, and perhaps often."

Historic recurrence is the repetition of similar events in history. The concept of historic recurrence has variously been applied to the overall history of the world (e.g., to the rises and falls of empires), to repetitive patterns in the history of a given polity, and to any two specific events which bear a striking similarity.

Quotes

• For what has been said is just repetition, what has been said has been said.
  • Khakheperraseneb, Complaints of Khakheperraseneb, around 1900 BCE

• The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
  • Ecclesiastes 1:9, (c. 450–200 BCE); KJV, 1611

• Nullumst iam dictum quod non dictum sit prius. (In fact, nothing is said that has not been said before.)
  • Terence, Eunuchus (The Eunuch, prologue, line 41), 161 BCE

• What experience and history teach is this — that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.
  • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, 1832, volume 1

• History is a gallery of pictures in which there are many copies and few originals.
  • Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime, 1858, p. 188

• History, we know, is apt to repeat herself, and to foist very old incidents upon us with only a slight change of costume.
  • George Eliot, 1859, Janet's Repentance, chapter 10, 1859

• History never repeats itself, but the Kaleidoscopic combinations of the pictured present often seem to be constructed of the broken fragments of antique legends. (more recently misquoted as a Mark Twain saying: History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.)
  • http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/01/12/history-rhymes/ Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, The Gilded Age: A Tale of To-Day by Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner, 1874 edition, Chapter 47: Laura in the Tombs and Her Visitors

• History exhibits truths... when [the facts] are seen not merely as they follow, but as they correspond... as they are paralleled.
  • Lord Acton, quoted in Michael Parenti, History as Mystery, City Lights Books, 1999, p. 8

• Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.
  • André Gide, Le Traité du Narcisse (Treatise on Narcissus)

• [The Russian Revolution] was anything but a new start... it is a monotonous repetition of the eternal revolution.
  • José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, Norton and Co., 1964, p. 93

• There really are broad patterns in history, and the search for them is as fascinating as it is productive.
  • Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel, Norton and Co., 1997, quoted as epigram in Luc Tellier, Urban World History, 2009

• Do we progress, in an upwards fashion, or merely ride the cycles of war and peace, boom and bust?
  • Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, Canongate, 2006, p. 322

• There are obvious parallels between human life cycles and those of ruling groups.
  • Geoff Mulgan, Good and Bad Power, Penguin, 2006, p. 199

• There were revolutions in France... then in Russia, in China... it was as if the world had a sickness that it kept inflicting on itself.
  • George W Bush, Decision Points, Crown, 2010, chapter one

• ... the cycles of history. The study of history allows you to see [them].
  • Steve Bannon, interviewed on Charlie Rose, 12 September 2017

• We Americans thought we were an exception to history.... The Vietnam War proved we were not an exception to history.
  • Neil Sheehan, speaking on the PBS series, The Vietnam War, episode 2, aired on 18 September 2017

See also

• Eternal return