Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it – Warning of Santayana

The warning of Santayana … Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, known in English as George Santayana.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it 

George Santayana

This is such a powerful and potent statement, that you can apply to a vast variety of situations. In essence, it is the human ability to quickly forget the past which makes progress so slow. We are doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over and over.

This does apply to all walks of life, and not only the political aspects of things.

Political wise, the quote have created a variant :

Those who forget their history are condemned to repeat it.

Which means if we do not take lessons from prior historic mistakes (wars), we will end up repeating them.

As i previously said, the quote extends way further, it does apply to every human. And in this entrepreneurship focused site, i would like to focus on this. The importance of memory, can not be stated enough. However memory alone is not helpful, if it is not coupled by a strong analysis of the situations.

Thus entrepreneurs and employees and anyone for that matter, should leverage memory or any tool that would help remembering or recalling information or situation, this will allow to achieve better. Also, unless you have a strong memory, it is likely you will forget a lot, and if the information you are learning is crucial for your progress, it is better to make use of tools to help with remembering.