George Satyatana :
"Those who can not remember the past are condemned to repeat it"

The idea is that people keep making the same mistakes (or, if not mistakes, doing the same things). For example, the same missteps keep leading to wars; fashions are in style, go out of style...and then come back in; people swear after a bad experience they will never drink again, but do. It is only by studying history that we can recognize this idea.

While certain events throughout history have been strikingly similar, the idea that history repeats itself is questionable. The causes of World War I and World War II, for example, were different (the wars were really one war, with a 20 year break to "grow" more troops).

The historian Daniel Boorstein wrote "History does not repeat itself...but it rhymes all the time." He may have been playing a game of semantics, but I agree with his sentiments. The direct causes and effects of historical events are never exactly the same. Still, certain themes are constant (good/evil, greed, ignorance, arrogance, progress, etc.), and we seem to repeat the same mistakes...but under differing circumstances.

Whatever the case may be, many people believe we humans refuse to learn the lessons of the past. According to George Hegel,
"The one thing history undoubtedly teaches us is that people have never learned anything from History."
[adopted from somewhere]
Sadly, that's humans nature. Many know they were wrong, but thousands of colours of "fantastic" excuses simply overtake the sense of guiltiness.
We never learned from the past!
Precisely,
Time and tide bring everything away, including memories and lessons.

Opinions!