History is moving in zig-zags and by roundabout ways.

History moves in strange ways.

History and societies do not crawl. They make jumps. They go from fracture to fracture, with a few vibrations in between. Yet we (and historians) like to believe in the predictable, small incremental progression.

History has always changed its course, changed its stance, swaying to the tunes, pendulum like, between a Ruling Party and an Opposition Party.

When history moves — really moves — it does so in great convulsive jolts.

We start from scratch, every generation. History does not bend inevitably toward justice, or freedom, or decency, or even stability. History doesn’t do that in Hong Kong, or in Moscow, or in Washington or New York City or Los Angeles. History goes where we push it. And if we don’t push, someone else will.

History moves in a circle.

If history moves forward, knowledge of it travels backwards, so that in writing of our own recent past we are continually meeting ourselves coming the other way.

History moves in contradictions. The skeleton of historic existence, the economic structure of society, also develops in contradictions. Forms eternally follow forms. Everything has only a passing being. The dynamic force of life creates the new over and over again — such is the law inherent in reality.

History is a series of nights and days. Short days and protracted nights.

It's not so much that history is simply cyclical, it seems to progress via recursive, repeated fractal patterns with minute variations.

Historical process is not a linear one. It is also not stagnant. On the contrary, it moves ahead and brings changes to social, political and economic structure.

I have thought often about how history happens twice: once when an event actually occurs and once when people discover that it has occurred. That second time is the first time for them, because they didn’t know about the first time.

All history consists of successive excursions from a single starting-point, to which man returns again and again to organize yet another search for a durable scale of values.