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About this quote

What does it mean?
Not knowing history leads people to unfairly criticize or misunderstand their own time period.
In plain terms
Ignoring history makes people judge the present unfairly.
What can you take from it?
Study history before criticizing current events.

Where it applies

  • political debate
  • social criticism
  • learning

Putting it to work

  • reading history
  • analyzing news
  • understanding context

Questions to consider

  • What do you know about your country's history?
  • How does that change your view of today?

Another view

Sometimes the present is genuinely worse than the past.

More from Gustave Flaubert

  1. The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of bourgeois stupidity.

    Permalink to quote #14
  2. What is beautiful is moral, that is all there is to it.

    Permalink to quote #16
  3. He is so corrupt that he would willingly pay for the pleasure of selling himself.

    Permalink to quote #13

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