Quotes About Memory

Every memory, no matter how remote its subject, takes place "now",at the moment it's called up in the mind. The more something is recalled, the more the brain has a chance to refine the original experience, because every memory is a re-creation, not a playback.

A nation that forgets its past can function no better than an individual with amnesia.

If we don't remember where we came from, we'll go back there.

Ideas have a history. They undergo a process of development. They change, are modified, and are distributed. They could be forgotten for a while, but they might reappear years, decades, or even centuries later. No matter how much you may wish you were an island unto yourself, such is not the case. Your upbringing, your culture, your associates—all of them have shaped who you are. That comes from the past.

in Ecclesiastes 1:9-11 "There is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything new of which one might say, 'See this, it is new?' Already it has existed for ages which were before us. There is no remembrance of earlier things; and of the later things which will occur, there will be no remembrance among those who will come later still.

The failure of memory, then is as much sociological as it is historical.

The absence of a sociological memory is nowhere more evident than in the study of race and ethnic relations in the southwest.

The posters and rock-star buttons and banners were valueless without the perspective of the mind that had attached significance to them. Souvenirs have no worth without nostalgia, after all. They're meaningless if a memory isn't linked to them.

We're not ourselves, are we? I'm certainly not myself, not anymore. And you're not either. You don't seem yourself. Not as I remember you.

Like I said, I'm fine. I don't ever think of her.' And I didn't ever think of her, except from time to time.

Then ------ dies, and everything that she thought or felt vanishes and is gone forever.

Last night they had said and done all those things, and now they were like strangers in a bus queue. The mistake she had made was to fall asleep and break the spell.

Then Emma Mayhew dies, and everything that she thought or felt vanishes and is gone forever

Both of our memories were deteriorating, and in recent years the effort required to recall a name or incident felt almost wearyingly physical, like clearing out an attic.

I had an infinite number of questions and would have been happy for her to recount her life in real time, would have been happy to walk on past Whitechapel and Limehouse into Essex and the estuary and on into the sea if she'd wanted to.

and I have a tiny little moment of anxiety, because I can't remember whether or not we're meant to be boycotting mars bars.

Both of our memories were deteriorating, and in recent years the effort required to recall a name or incident felt almost wearyingly physical, like clearing out an attic. Proper nouns were particularly elusive. Adverbs and adjectives would go next, until we were left with pronouns and imperative verbs. Eat! Walk! Sleep now!

to recall a name or incident felt almost wearyingly physical, like clearing out an attic.

He or she cannot clearly remember what happened when they were two, three, or four years of age. Worse, the reality of their developmental history has been clouded and denied by the effects of both the splitting and moral defenses. The result of this psychological conspiracy leaves one and only one recourse open for the victim: to unconsciously act out the same destructive pattern with the next generation of child-victims.

And I have come to understand the truth of what Ansel Adams said that you don't make a photograph just with a camera but that you bring to the act all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard and the people you have loved.

Once upon a time, in the Official Version, we were blessed and happy, our parents young, privileged and good-looking, we, their children, bound for special destinies like they'd had. In Boston, our ship struck the iceberg and went down in an hour, but all hands appeared to make to the lifeboats. The trip to shore proves long, and only when we finally muster do we realize one of us is missing.

Uncle Eric holding court, proud the only time he ever left Yorkshire was to kill Germans.

We can't just erase the history we don't like, then there won't be any lessons to be learned.

Some of my most remarkable case studies involve people changing their lives and health for the better through simple brain-making edits to their dietary choices. They cut carbs and add healthy fats, especially cholesterol—a key player in brain and psychological health. I've watched this fundamental dietary shift single-handedly extinguish depression and all of its kissing cousins, from chronic anxiety to poor memory and even ADHD.