The famous quote used as a proverb by Italian writer George Santayana gets mangled often. Originally, it is “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” and prefaced by a passage from Santayana’s The Life of Reason that does plenty to reinforce its context:
“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual.”
Today, Santayana’s wisdom is often rendered as “Those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it” — catchier, yeah, but also lesser for its concision.