Robert Sapolsky on history

Like so many other animals, we have an often-frantic need to conform, belong, and obey. Such conformity can be markedly maladaptive, as we forgo better solutions in the name of the foolishness of the crowd.

If a rat is a good model for your emotional life, you’re in big trouble.

The far-from-original point I will try to make now should seem obvious: There is an unsettling similarity between the rituals of the obsessive-compulsive and the rituals of the observantly religious.

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

The man who has no sense of history, is like a man who has no ears or eyes.

Adolf Hitler1889–1945

There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.

Harry S. Truman1884–1972