"The truth is that history constantly presents new problems in the guise of old."

William Pfaff Literature See all quotes by William Pfaff →

React to this quote

More by William Pfaff

“America's problem is how to free itself from the grip of it's exhausted ideas.”

“Our culture is teleological-it presumes purposive development and a conclusion.”

“Europeans believe in democracy - or, at least, in republican government - but they have considered the alternatives, and continue to do so, and that scandalizes Americans.”

“One cannot say that it will never happen again, or that it cannot happen.”

“The center holds; passion falls away. That is what happened ideologically in Western Europe over recent years.”

“It is one of the perceptual defects of Western government and press to assign Western-style motives to what people do in non-Western societies, as if these are universally relevant.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Deniers do not get their views just from simple mistakes about language and truth. Rather, they believe that there is something to worry about in important areas of our thought and in traditional inte…"

— Bernard Williams

Philosophy1929–2003

#truth

"Confucius was not so much a philosopher as a proto-ideologist: what interested him was not metaphysical Truths but rather a harmonious social order within which individuals could lead happy and ethica…"

— Slavoj Žižek

Philosophy1949

#truth

"A single test which proves some piece of theory wrong is more valuable than a hundred tests showing that idea might be true."

— Arthur C. Clarke

Literature1917–2008

#truth

"Looking at these men, and realizing how high they stand among humanity, how far they have gone in human evolution, is it not logical to say that we cannot see the bounds of human attainment, and that …"

— Charles Webster Leadbeater

occultism1854–1934

#Human Nature