Those that don’t know history (because they can’t read)…

… it really seems as though old Hegel, in the guise of the World Spirit, were directing history from the grave and, with the greatest conscientiousness, causing everything to be re-enacted twice over, once as grand tragedy and the second time as rotten farce, Caussidière for Danton, L. Blanc for Robespierre, Barthélemy for Saint-Just, Flocon for Carnot, and the moon-calf together with the first available dozen debt-encumbered lieutenants for the little corporal and his band of marshals.

Engels in a letter to Marx, 1851

(As a side-note, neither Marx nor Engels believed this to be much more than a witty observation, meaning: They did not assume this was some sort of grand law of history, just a tendency of similar dynamics persisting and reoccurring.)