Memory… is the diary that we all carry about with us.
Oscar WildePeople see things differently and remember things differently. It’s why if somebody robs a liquor store and there are four witnesses they’ll often disagree.
John KennedyNothing has really happened until it has been recorded.
Virginia WoolfNobody is forgotten when it is convenient to remember him.
Benjamin DisraeliNo trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man. No study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory.
PlatoI’ve got a terrible memory; it’s probably because I’m always concentrating on what I’m doing now.
Vivienne WestwoodMemory is the treasury and guardian of all things.
Marcus Tullius CiceroMaybe I should say that memory interests me a great deal, because I think we all tell stories of our lives to ourselves as well as to other people. Well, women do, anyway. Women do this a lot. And I think when men get older, they do this too, but maybe in slightly different terms.
Alice MunroIn memory everything seems to happen to music.
Tennessee WilliamsI had been told from school onwards that the best definition of a human being was man the tool-maker – yet I had just watched a chimp tool-maker in action. I remember that day as vividly as if it was yesterday.
Jane GoodallMemory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories – and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories.
Alice MunroIf I like a thing, it just sticks after once reading it or hearing it.
Abraham LincolnMemory is deceptive because it is colored by today’s events.
Albert EinsteinI remember at the age of five travelling on a trolley car with my mother past a group of women on a picket line at a textile plant, seeing them being viciously beaten by security people. So that kind of thing stayed with me.
Noam ChomskyThe true art of memory is the art of attention.
Samuel JohnsonThe happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.
Samuel JohnsonI have a memory, and I can just eliminate mistakes when they come up because I’ve already made them.
Tom BradyIf the Christian is a restorationist, a legalist, if he wants everything clear and safe, then he will find nothing. Tradition and memory of the past must help us to have the courage to open up new areas to God.
Pope FrancisWhen I’m on stage, it’s really intense. My mind is going a million miles an hour, trying to remember my act, trying to say it all the right way. It’s funny how different it looks and how it’s happening. There are three Fellini circuses in my head, and outwardly it looks like I’m going to get a bagel.
Steven WrightSometimes I get the start of a story from a memory, an anecdote, but that gets lost and is usually unrecognizable in the final story.
Alice MunroI only see clearly what I remember.
Jean-Jacques RousseauI really thought I was on the way out. My husband Blake saved my life. Often I don’t know what I do, then the next day the memory returns. And then I am engulfed in shame.
Amy WinehouseMy father belongs to the generation that fought the war in the 1940s. When I was a kid my father told me stories – not so many, but it meant a lot to me. I wanted to know what happened then, to my father’s generation. It’s a kind of inheritance, the memory of it.
Haruki MurakamiWe have a Boesendorfer piano that I play every day. It keeps my brain and my fingers active.
Anthony HopkinsNothing stands out so conspicuously, or remains so firmly fixed in the memory, as something which you have blundered.
Marcus Tullius CiceroI heard a definition once: Happiness is health and a short memory! I wish I’d invented it, because it is very true.
Audrey HepburnJoe Frazier got hit more than me – and he doesn’t have Parkinson’s.
Muhammad AliEvery man’s memory is his private literature.
Aldous HuxleyYesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.
Khalil GibranThe fact is, when men carry the same ideals in their hearts, nothing can isolate them – neither prison walls nor the sod of cemeteries. For a single memory, a single spirit, a single idea, a single conscience, a single dignity will sustain them all.
Fidel CastroMan is the only animal capable of reasoning, though many others possess the faculty of memory and instruction in common with him.
AristotleI do sometimes look back at things I’ve written in the past, and think, ‚I just don’t remember being the person who wrote that.‘
Brian EnoIf in the twilight of memory we should meet once more, we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.
Khalil GibranAs soon as you have a language that has a past tense and a future tense you’re going to say, ‚Where did we come from, what happens next?‘ The ability to remember the past helps us plan the future.
Margaret AtwoodSweet is the memory of past troubles.
Marcus Tullius CiceroA great city, whose image dwells in the memory of man, is the type of some great idea. Rome represents conquest; Faith hovers over the towers of Jerusalem; and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique world, Art.
Benjamin DisraeliI have never kept diaries. I just remember a lot and am more self-centered than most people.
Alice MunroHow we experience memory sometimes, it’s not linear. We’re not telling the stories to ourselves. We know the story; we’re just seeing it in flashes overlaid.
Frank OceanPictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory.
Francis BaconSince everything is in our heads, we had better not lose them.
Coco ChanelSometimes I’ll jot a clever turn of phrase down. Sometimes I’ll just remember it.
John KennedyMany a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory it too good.
Friedrich NietzscheA retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness.
Elbert HubbardIf it’s hard to remember, it’ll be difficult to forget.
Arnold SchwarzeneggerI have lost my mental faculties but am perfectly well.
Ralph Waldo EmersonNo memory of having starred atones for later disregard, or keeps the end from being hard.
Robert FrostIf, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.
H. L. MenckenThe difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.
Salvador DaliI remember very little about writing the first series of ‚Hitchhiker’s.‘ It’s almost as if someone else wrote it.
Douglas AdamsYou tell me: Can you live crushed under the weight of the present? Without a memory of the past and without the desire to look ahead to the future by building something, a future, a family? Can you go on like this? This, to me, is the most urgent problem that the Church is facing.
Pope FrancisGeologists have a saying – rocks remember.
Neil ArmstrongWhen I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.
Mark TwainContext and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one’s life.
Anthony BourdainI never heard of an old man forgetting where he had buried his money! Old people remember what interests them: the dates fixed for their lawsuits, and the names of their debtors and creditors.
Marcus Tullius CiceroHold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: ‚I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.‘
Maya AngelouIf you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.
Mark TwainI’m proud to be an actor. See, as an actor, you live longer. Football players, the brain and all that stuff, ooh-eee, that’s not good.
Mr. TMy mind doesn’t work, my memories don’t work like a computer file where I can just retrieve them and, boy, there it is. My mind is selective in terms of memories. When I try to think back to college or high school, there are gaps. I try to fill them in. But I can’t tell you it’s always the truth.
John KennedyWe do not know where to look, or what to look for, when something is memorized. We do not know what it means, or what change there is in the nervous system, when a fact is learned. This is a very important problem which has not been solved at all.
Richard P. FeynmanAnyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.
Leonardo da Vinci