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

Movies are not novels, and that’s why, when filmmakers try to adapt novels, particularly long or complex novels, the result is almost always failure. It can’t be done.

There is no memory or retentive faculty based on lasting impression. What we designate as memory is but increased responsiveness to repeated stimuli.

Nobody is forgotten when it is convenient to remember him.

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

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom.

If you or I fail at business, we fail. If we cheat and fail, we go to jail. But if you’re rich and politically connected, your incompetence may be protected by a government bailout.

I’ve got a terrible memory; it’s probably because I’m always concentrating on what I’m doing now.

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

Success and failure are equally disastrous.

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

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

Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.

No one is ever successful at everything that they do.

There’s a silly notion that failure’s not an option at NASA. Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.

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

Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.

My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.

The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure.

What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.

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

Failure is nature’s plan to prepare you for great responsibilities.

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.

The English don’t like concepts, really, not from a pop star. It’s alright if they come from an ‚intellectual,‘, but from a pop star you’re getting ahead of yourself. Part of the class game is that you shouldn’t rise above your station, and to start talking about concepts if you’re in the pop world is getting a bit uppity, isn’t it?

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.

No man ever achieved worth-while success who did not, at one time or other, find himself with at least one foot hanging well over the brink of failure.

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.‘

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.

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.

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.

If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.

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

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.

Talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.

The thing I always say to people is this: ‚If you avoid failure, you also avoid success.‘

The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.

There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period.

Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.

At places like Davos, people like to tell success stories. But their financial success has come with an unthinkable price tag. And on climate change, we have to acknowledge we have failed.

After the 9/11 apocalypse happened in New York City, people, particularly New Yorkers, who breathed in the ash, or saw the results of that, have a tendency to keep seeing echoes and having flashbacks to it.

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

Optimism is a kind of heart stimulant – the digitalis of failure.

One of the things I definitely think of as a driver of me is fear. And it’s fear of failure, fear of being overtaken.

Voters quickly forget what a man says.

If you don’t understand the details of your business you are going to fail.

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.

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

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.

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

Principles and rules are intended to provide a thinking man with a frame of reference.

I only see clearly what I remember.

Many a man’s strength is in opposition, and when he faileth, he grows out of use.

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

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.

Geologists have a saying – rocks remember.

Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

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 probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.

The intersection of law, politics, and technology is going to force a lot of good thinking.