[Of the Bourbons:] They have learned nothing, and forgotten nothing.

Talleyrand’s remark is associated with the first Bourbon Restoration in France (1814–1815), when Louis XVIII returned to the throne after Napoleon’s initial abdication. A veteran survivor of the Ancien Régime, the Revolution, and the Napoleonic Empire, Talleyrand watched the restored court and its émigré supporters press for a return to pre‑Revolutionary attitudes and privileges. The line is commonly reported as his sardonic judgment on the Bourbons’ political tone-deafness: after the upheavals of 1789–1814, they behaved as if nothing essential had changed, failing to adapt to new social realities and constitutional expectations.

The epigram condemns a ruling house for being incapable of political learning. “Learned nothing” implies they drew no lessons from revolution, exile, and the collapse of the old order; “forgotten nothing” implies they retained every grievance, habit, and claim from the past. Together, the phrases capture a double failure: no capacity for reform, and no capacity for forgiveness or pragmatic compromise. In Talleyrand’s mouth, it is also a warning about restoration politics: a regime that returns unchanged after a cataclysm risks provoking renewed instability, because it treats history as reversible rather than as a transformation that demands new accommodations.

French: « Ils n’ont rien appris, ni rien oublié. »
Also seen: « Les Bourbons n’ont rien appris et n’ont rien oublié. »
English variants: “They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.” / “They learned nothing and forgot nothing.”