“‘History, Paul Valery once wrote, ‘is the science of what never happens twice...’“

George W. Ball, The Past Has Another Pattern: Memoirs

“It is universally acknowledged that there is a great uniformity among the actions of men, in all nations and ages, and that human nature remains still the same, in its principles and operations. The same motives always produce the same actions. The same events always follow from the same causes.”

David Hume, quoted in Richard Hofstadter The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It

“Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat.”

Ralph Ellison Invisible Man

“For everywhere, above and below, you will find nothing but the selfsame things; they fill the pages of all history, ancient, modern, and contemporary; and they fill our cities and homes today. There is no such thing as novelty; all is as trite as it is transitory.”

Marcus Aurelius Meditations VII.1

“If you cannot prevent your enemies from swallowing you whole, at least you must do what you can to prevent them from digesting you.”

“Rousseau’s famous charge to the Poles” quoted by George Weigel in Witness to Hope (saying that in World War II it “was tested as never before.”)

“Once the memory of the past grows dim, we will forget who we are and why we exist as a people. Poised ready to relish the pleasure of the moment, without regard for how we became a free society, we risk losing all.”

Solveig Eggerz in Joseph Baldacchino Educating for Virtue

“‘The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please,’ wrote Edmund Burke, the hero of American conservatives, ‘we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.’”

David Frum Dead Right

“Even a paranoid can have enemies.”

Henry Kissinger, cited by Michiko Kukutani, “Bound by Suspicion,” The New York Times Magazine, January 1, 1997 and requoted in Quotes, Notes and Anecdotes (The Write File Quarterly) Spring 1997