George Santayana

Now, those things matter, but they miss the more important point which is: how did communist lunatics take over a massive empire in the first place? That question is the central question of our times because those same tactics are being run again right now.

As the Spanish American philosopher George Santayana warned, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." And that's the point of this episode, so we don't repeat it.

That's why we're doing this.

This is The Real History of Communism, the Russian Revolution.

That's the voice of a mad fanatic.

And let's always remember that Santayana defined a fanatic as someone who, when he loses sight of his goal, redoubles his

efforts.

But this is the point I'd like to make.

I mean, all these things, it's all there, but ultimately it's a time capsule because I think we need to move forward as a species.

How do we get the world to move in a positive direction and to not remember the past, is to be doomed to, what's the quote that George Santayana said, about being condemned to repeat those mistakes.

So let's not repeat those mistakes.

And I'm not saying I'm here to give answers.

realizing that we don't know realizing that we have we don't know the path forward and and embracing that kind of indeterminate odd open relation to existence.

And one of the things I bumped into was Santayana talking about The Unknowable.

He has a book called The Unknowable, 23.

And he says, you know, philosophy, science, they throw nets over existence.

And, uh, I think it's gonna be important for us to say... to not try to deny that this happened, not try to whitewash it, which is what he wants to do about periods of white supremacy and violence in our history.

But to put it in the museum and have people study it, because those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it, said Santayana, and I think there is a lot to that.

Trump very much and has been whitewashing January 6th.

Well, I mean, his whole political coalition, or the remnants of it anyway, um, [clears throat] congregate around the idea that he won the 2020 presidential election, which, uh, Joe Biden won by more than seven million votes, three hundred and six to two hundred and thirty-two in the Electoral College.

It demands that we continuously question who we are and where we came from and where we're going and why.

A very famous alumnus of Harvard, George Santayana, the philosopher, once remarked, "Imagination needs a soil in history, tradition, and human institutions, else its random growths are not significant enough, and like trivial melodies, will go immediately out of fashion." A soil in history, tradition, human institutions.

This is the soil in which Harvard and Boston, with their unique combination of ingenuity and perseverance, find their deepest roots.

This is the soil from which the fruits of imagination have sprung for generations, and here at the Harvard Innovation Lab, inventors and innovators will plant and nurture the seeds of new ideas.