"If he does not know what has been tried in the past, he cannot very well avoid those pitfalls as they come up in the future."
Excellent.
Today even our intellectuals speak as if they have zero knowledge of history and what has failed in the past. Emphasis has changed from the belief that no one person or small group of people can possibly be more wise than the whole of conventional wisdom and past philosophy, to the theory that we all should assume we know everything because we "think for ourselves."
I've always wondered what good it does to think for ones self if one is an idiot.
