The only thing that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.

 “The only thing that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.” This is a worrying thought because there is so much that went wrong when we look at world history. As we are often told, history repeats itself.

For Hegel, the purpose or goal of history is the progress of the consciousness of freedom. Progress is rational in so far as it corresponds to this development. This rational development is the evolution of Geist attaining consciousness of itself, since the very nature of spirit is freedom.

Hegel regards history as an intelligible process moving towards a specific condit

ion—the realization of human freedom. “The question at issue is therefore the ultimate end of mankind, the end which the spirit sets itself in the world" 

When it comes to the possibilities of 'learning from history' there are doubtless many things we could aspire to learn.

Some of those would be more practically useful, in terms of contributing to the normal and decent functioning of well-meaning societies than others.

The following selection of famous quotations and quotes about ' learning from history ' begins with a few quotes in which several persons express some disillusionment about Humanity's all-too-frequent failure at actually learning from history or the past mistakes of history.

The selection soon continues with other quotations where such seriously famous observers as Edmund Burke, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Machiavelli present views that very directly suggest that learning deep lessons from history is both possible and desirable.

Our overview of this learning from history may not so much explicitly focus importance on the broader range of past mistakes of history, of which there are many, as learning useful lessons about - The Human Condition AND Social Change.

This can show, through cautionary examples, how past mistakes and serious misjudgements have arisen from time to time disrupting the normal and decent functioning of would-be well-meaning societies.

"We spend a great deal of time studying history, which, let's face it, is mostly the history of stupidity."

By Hegel