memory quotes

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.‘

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.

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.

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

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

I have an excellent memory, a most excellent memory.

Nobody is forgotten when it is convenient to remember him.

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

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

You 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

The memory of that scene for me is like a frame of film forever frozen at that moment: the red carpet, the green lawn, the white house, the leaden sky. The new president and his first lady.

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.

Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!

I only see clearly what I remember.

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

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.

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

If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more, we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.

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

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.

Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.

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

The two offices of memory are collection and distribution.

The 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.

Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.

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.

Context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one’s life.

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.

Right now I’m having amnesia and deja vu at the same time… I think I’ve forgotten this before.

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

My first recollection is that of a bugle call.

Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.

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

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

The 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.

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

Sweet is the memory of past troubles.

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

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.‘

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Voters quickly forget what a man says.

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

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.

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

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

I 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.