Holes in the memory. You grab on to some things, others have completely disappeared.

My first recollection is that of a bugle call.

No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man. No study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory.

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

We 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.

In my opinion, there is no aspect of reality beyond the reach of the human mind.

I do not, in fact, use many puns. Certainly there are far fewer than people believe. But I suspect the ones I do occasionally use tend to hang around in people’s memories for a while.

Voters quickly forget what a man says.

Geologists have a saying – rocks remember.

For my name and memory I leave to men’s charitable speeches, and to foreign nations and the next ages.

We do not learn; and what we call learning is only a process of recollection.

No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.

Man is the only animal capable of reasoning, though many others possess the faculty of memory and instruction in common with him.

I only see clearly what I remember.

Will and intellect are one and the same thing.

I have total recall. I remember being born. I remember being in the womb, I remember being inside. Coming out was great.

I met Howard Zinn in 1961, my first year at Spelman College in Atlanta. He was the tall, rangy, good-looking professor that many of the girls at Spelman swooned over.

Sometimes I’ll jot a clever turn of phrase down. Sometimes I’ll just remember it.

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

I 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.

The nature of the human mind is such that unless it is stimulated by images of things acting upon it from without, all remembrance of them passes easily away.

If, 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.

Every time I hear a politician mention the word ‚stimulus,‘ my mind flashes back to high school biology class, when I touched battery wires to a dead frog to make it twitch.

My recollection is – and I’d have to confirm this – but I don’t recall paying any money to go to law school.

The two offices of memory are collection and distribution.

I make such big efforts to forget things and I can’t tell the story of my life because, thank God, I’m still living it.

When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

But men are men; the best sometimes forget.

I never know what day it is. Never, ever, ever.

Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory it too good.

Memory… is the diary that we all carry about with us.

I listen to these comparisons with Cristiano Ronaldo, I’ll be happy and then forget it in five seconds.

To forget one’s purpose is the commonest form of stupidity.

The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.

As 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.

I have a memory, and I can just eliminate mistakes when they come up because I’ve already made them.

There are four Powers: memory and intellect, desire and covetousness. The two first are mental and the others sensual. The three senses: sight, hearing and smell cannot well be prevented; touch and taste not at all.

A retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

I 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.‘

If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.

If it’s hard to remember, it’ll be difficult to forget.

Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?

If 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.

Every man’s memory is his private literature.

I 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.

A 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.

I remember very little about writing the first series of ‚Hitchhiker’s.‘ It’s almost as if someone else wrote it.

Nothing stands out so conspicuously, or remains so firmly fixed in the memory, as something which you have blundered.

All my life, whenever it comes time to make a decision, I make it and forget about it.

A sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter, in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring without the iron or gold.

I have an excellent memory, a most excellent memory.

My 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.

Kindnesses are easily forgotten; but injuries! what worthy man does not keep those in mind?

I think history is collective memories. In writing, I’m using my own memory, and I’m using my collective memory.

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.

Maybe 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.

How 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.

The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.