Question

What is the following quote saying:

"History never looks like history when you are living through it."
--John W. Gardner"--

Answer 1

"History never looks like history when you are living through it."

This quote explains how, at the moment, you don't realize you're living through history. You don't really think about the fact that someday in the future, what you are now doing will be considered history. When we think about past history, we notice how messy and racist society was, but we never realize that someday in the future, someones going to think the exact same thing about us and the time we lived. Everything we do impacts history, but we just never really stopped to think about it.

I hope this helps :)

Answer 2

basically saying you don’t realize you’re repeating history until it’s too late