Jaywalker Publisher's Note: Forget the Past!, May/June 2004

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Forget the Past!

A quick search on the Internet repeatedly bumps into the famous George Santayana quote “those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it”. Yet the ‘net contradictorily informs us that he actually said “those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it”. Not to miss any angle, the Misinformation Superhighway quotes poor, tired, old George as having said “those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it”.

Of course, cypherspace has a few other versions of this quote that offer condemnation instead of doom, such as “those who forget history are condemned to repeat it” and “those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it”. Finally, for the historically unaware, the digital world serves up “those who are ignorant of history are condemned to repeat it”.

There are three things I’ve learned from this:

1) Those who don’t learn from history are condemned to write web pages about it.

2) Those who cannot come up with quotes of their own are condemned to repeat them.

3) Those who do not remember the past are doomed to misquote it.

J.D.C.

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