"It is interesting to note that the men who, in the teeth of history, proclaimed that, if you want peace, you must prepare for war, were the self-same men who solemnly declared that Experience teaches, experientia docet-- or, as Mrs. Micawber more aptly put it, "Experientia does it." But as a matter of brute historical fact, Experientia generally doesn't. We got on doing what our own and our father's experience has demonstrated, again and again, to be inappropriate or downright disastrous; and we go on hoping (this time like Mr. Micawber) that "something will turn up" -- something completely different from anything which, on the basis of experience, we have any right to expect. Needless to say, it does not turn up. The same old mistakes have the same old consequences and we remain in the same old mess."

Aldous Huxley