history repeats itself

Definitions

Things that have happened in the past will or tend to happen again in one way or another.

Equivalents

Examples

“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then assuredly a narrative of domestic trials, of political emergencies, and of religious animosities can never be out of date⟳, since men and women still bear⟳ in their hearts, passions as vindictive, a patriotism as ardent, and, let⟳ us hope⟳, a piety as sincere as distinguished, in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.”

“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.”

“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”

“We all know⟳ [in paraphrase] Marx's remark⟳ that history repeats itself first as a tragedy and then as a farce. Marx had in mind⟳ the tragedy of the fall⟳ of Napoleon I and the later farce of the reign of his nephew Napoleon III. Back in the 1960s, Herbert Marcuse remarked that the lesson of Nazism seems to be the opposite one: first as a farce (throughout the 1920s, Hitler and his gang were mostly taken as a bunch of marginal political clowns), then as a tragedy (when Hitler effectively took power).”

CEFR level