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.

Billy Graham is one of my great lifetime heroes. I think he epitomizes the essence of what a Christian leader should be. I have participated in some of his crusades a couple of times in Atlanta. I’ve seen the profound impact he’s had on me personally, and on other people who were not Christians and accepted Christ as Savior.

Seeing Pax get extra-nervous about which shirt he is going to wear when he meets Aung San Suu Kyi, I get very moved. He rightfully doesn’t get nervous going to a movie premiere; he gets nervous going to meet her.

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

Nobody is forgotten when it is convenient to remember him.

Yesterday’s just a memory, tomorrow is never what it’s supposed to be.

People 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.

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

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.

It seems that it had been destined before that I should occupy myself so thoroughly with the vulture, for it comes to my mind as a very early memory, when I was still in the cradle, a vulture came down to me, he opened my mouth with his tail and struck me a few times with his tail against my lips.

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

Geologists have a saying – rocks remember.

I actually started off majoring in computer science, but I knew right away I wasn’t going to stay with it. It was because I had this one professor who was the loneliest, saddest man I’ve ever known. He was a programmer, and I knew that I didn’t want to do whatever he did. So after that, I switched to Communications.

Sweet is the memory of past troubles.

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

The two offices of memory are collection and distribution.

John Lewis Gaddis is not only the favorite historian of the Reagan administration, but he’s regarded as the dean of Cold War scholarship, the leading figure in the American Cold War scholarship, a professor at Yale.

Howard Zinn was magical as a teacher. Witty, irreverent, and wise, he loved what he was teaching and clearly wanted his students to love it, also.

If I go to Italy, I will certainly request to meet with Pope Francis, whom I admire very much.

A political event was that I met Fidel Castro, the Cuban revolutionary. He is a young, intelligent guy, very sure of himself and extraordinarily audacious; I think we hit it off well.

I will meet my countrymen. I understand only one language: that they are my countrymen, they are my brothers. You may see with whatever colour you want; Modi will not go into that colour.

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

Every man’s memory is his private literature.

I have never kept diaries. I just remember a lot and am more self-centered than most people.

I practiced drawing all the time and became very interested in it. If I was at a meeting that wasn’t getting anywhere – like the one where Carl Rogers came to Caltech to discuss with us whether Caltech should develop a psychology department – I would draw the other people.

Let me tell you what I literally told every world leader I’ve met with, and I’ve met them all: It’s never, never, never been a good bet to bet against America. We have the finest fighting force in the world.

Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.

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

When 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.

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 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.

Hold 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.‘

In America, the professor talks to the mechanic. They are in the same category.

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

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

I remember when the candle shop burned down. Everyone stood around singing ‚Happy Birthday.‘

The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.

My first recollection is that of a bugle call.

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.

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

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.

Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory.

The Center for Disease Control started out as the malaria war control board based in Atlanta. Partly because the head of Coke had some people out to his plantation, and they got infected with malaria, and partly ‚cause all the military recruits were coming down and having a higher fatality rate from malaria while training than in the field.

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

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.

If I like a thing, it just sticks after once reading it or hearing it.

Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today’s events.

It is only by not paying one’s bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.

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.

The sons of Judah have to choose that God may again choose them. The divine principle of our race is action, choice, resolved memory.

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.

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

Sometimes I get the start of a story from a memory, an anecdote, but that gets lost and is usually unrecognizable in the final story.

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

Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories – and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories.

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

No memory of having starred atones for later disregard, or keeps the end from being hard.

I have been a professor, and I have been a policymaker, and as a professor, you think in terms of truth or absolutes.

Voters quickly forget what a man says.

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.