It’s hard to believe how frequently “everything old is
new again”, how often “what goes around comes around”, or how reliably “the past does not repeat
itself, but it rhymes”.
Having studied the past only just a little, I have still seen enough to grudgingly
second the truism that “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.”
Even its slightly darker kindred observation, “Insanity is doing the same thing
over and over again and expecting different results,” though wildly overused,
has become cliché precisely because we have to acknowledge that people do this
all the time.
We really must be nuts.
