The adage, History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes, or less succinctly, historical, and current events may not unfold in the same manner, but they often follow similar patterns or themes. As an example, the rise of authoritarianism usually follows, and rhymes, with the erosion of democratic norms, intolerance of dissent, animosity towards religious or ethnic minorities, economic instability, isolation of true democratic countries, and war.

This quote is often attributed to Mark Twain but no collaborating evidence for him saying exactly this has ever been found. He did say something similar, in a novel he wrote with Charles Warner, the 1874 The Gilded Age: A Tale of To-Day that “History never repeats itself, but the Kaleidoscopic combinations of the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends.” The quote in its entirety is sentence that Twain could never write, it had to have come from his co-author.

Austrian American psychoanalyst Theodor Reik, a student of Freud, published an essay in 1965, “The Unreachables” where he wrote: It has been said that history repeats itself. This is perhaps not quite correct; it merely rhymes. There are recurring cycles, ups and downs, but the course of events is essentially the same, with small variations. It has been said that history repeats itself. This is perhaps not quite correct; it merely rhymes.

Regardless of whomever said, History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes were astute observers of history and life.

Source: Quote Investigator, 2014. Graphic: Publicity photo of Reik, 1920s, public domain.