Quotations from July 4

There are literary and historical quotations that, perhaps because of my own personal family history, now lost to me in Kiev, Ukraine, stick with me, always.  In Kiev, Babi Yar is now a memorial at a ravine.  Babi Yar is also an eponymous, documentary novel (Anatoly Kuznetsov) and a memorial poem (Yevgeny Yevtushenko).  As for the quotations given below, you will mostly know them as from writers and statesmen both.  In one, the second, it comes with regret. The quotations appear in writings over and over, and at least one is carved into the record (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).   I write them down now on July 4, with attribution.  They are my American flag for the day.    "The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history." -Georg Wilhelm Friedrich He…