- George Santayana.
- Winston Churchill.
What type of past? ANY type of past. ANYBODY'S past. Any and ALL.
Prophecy is something else. Prophecies are visions.
But we can use prophecy in some cases to better understand how history can repeat itself in the future. Prophetic events are almost always the most extreme forms of historical repetition.
We can never be entirely sure where on the timeline of historical repetition prophetic events will occur, but on rare occasions we may know.