One of the main purposes of university education is to escape from the Zeitgeist, from the mean, narrow, provincial spirit which is constantly assuring us that we are at the peak of human achievement, that we stand on the edge of unprecedented prosperity or an unparalleled catastrophe; that the next summit conference is going to be the most fateful in history or that the leader of the day is either the greatest, or the most disastrous, of all time. It is a liberation of the spirit to acquire perspective, to recognize that every generation is confronted by problems of the utmost subjective urgency, but that an objective grading is probably impossible; to learn that the same moral predicaments and the same ideas have been explored before. One need read very little in political theory to become aware of recurrences and repetitions.

Wight, Martin (1991) International Theory: The Three Traditions, Leicester: Leicester University Press for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, edited by Brian Porter and Gabriele Wight, 導言，p.6

本書編選自1950年代Wight(1913-72)在倫敦政經學院的講稿

International politics is the realm of recurrence and repetition, it is the field in which political action is most regularly necessitous.

Wight, Martin , ‘Why is there no International Theory?’, in H.Butterfield and M.Wight eds., Diplomatic Investigations, London, Allen and Unwin, 1966.

發表於【國際政治理論】英國委員會首次集會，1959年一月

Within a system, a theory explains recurrences and repetitions, not change.

Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979, p.69