Contemplate this…

There are 2 quotes that I’ve been replaying in my head for a long time. One is the quote from George Willhelm Hegel

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

And one is a most famous ‘refran’ (i.e. Spanish proverb) that is by far my mother’s favorite

Nadie aprende por cabeza ajena
(literal translation: Nobody learns from someone else’s head)
(actual translation: You have to experience things yourself to learn from them)

I’ve always valued both quotes as fact. Yet only recently I realized that they contradict each other. And I wonder which is the best advice to follow.

At a glance both of them are true. Any given history class will tell use the fact that you repeat mistakes if you don’t learn from those mistakes made by your predecessors. Yet how will one learn from these mistakes if they don’t actually make the mistakes on their own.

Ponder that.