History is a wheel, for the nature of man is fundamentally unchanging.

The line frames history as cyclical (“a wheel”) because human nature—ambition, fear, greed, love, tribalism—does not substantially change. If people remain driven by the same impulses, then societies tend to reenact familiar patterns: power consolidates, conflicts recur, reforms decay, and old mistakes return in new guises. Read this way, the quote expresses a skeptical view of progress: technology and institutions may evolve, but the underlying motivations that shape events persist. It also fits Martin’s broader thematic interest in repeating dynastic struggles and the moral continuity between past and present, where different names and banners mask similar human dramas.