Quotes About Memory

The American world had - seemingly, at least - become a Jeffersonian world by the election of 1800, which placed Thomas Jefferson in the presidency. Jefferson had been Hamilton's rival in the new government's early years, and Hamilton has figured in the public memory almost as much for that rivalry as for his positive achievements.

What I read, I read thoroughly and retain almost all of it.

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

We often talk about people with great memories as though it were some sort of an innate gift, but that is not the case. Great memories are learned. At the most basic level, we remember when we pay attention. We remember when we are deeply engaged.

Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.

I do remember, though, when I discovered the third! I was about five years old - it was a very pleasing sound. I remembered that if I hit one note, then skipped one and played the next, I could get this really good sound.

We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget.

Remembrance and reflection how allied. What thin partitions divides sense from thought.

Memory depends very much on the perspicuity, regularity, and order of our thoughts. Many complain of the want of memory, when the defect is in the judgment; and others, by grasping at all, retain nothing.

When I go back and read my journals or fiction, I am always surprised. I may not remember having those thoughts, but they still exist and I know they are mine, and it's all part of making sense of who I am.

What we hold in our heads - our memory, our feelings, our thoughts, our sense of our own history - is the sum of our humanity.

God has given each one of us a gift greater than a thousand I.B.M. machines. It is called a memory, and everything that passes through our five senses is stored in this faculty.

I've probably done more than a thousand interviews, and I can't remember what people asked me two months ago or two days ago.

Only a thousand words? What would it be worth to you, having clear experience at the Divine Vibrational Frequency? Think that might be worth far more than all the thousands of photos currently stored on your phone? Actually, all your direct experience at the Divine Vibrational Frequency goes into permanent memory, stored as process rather than content, and kept sacred in your Storehouse of Impressions, retained now and also throughout your long future... as an eternal soul.

Two hundred generations of European Jews. All gone, just as if they'd never been. It was the first time it was really real for me--just as if I were standing at the top of a ladder and somebody yanked the ladder away--and I was still standing there, only now it was *possible* to fall, because all my connections had been cut away, and there I was looking down into empty space, thinking about how I'd come this close to just not existing at all.

She unequivocally rejected his crimes, yet he was the father who, in her childhood memory, was loving—until he wasn't.

Svetlana was moved when her son, Joseph, kissed the body on the forehead to say good-bye.

While someone with the first person knowledge is still alive, while records are still available, while relatives of witnesses can come forward, the stories must be told.

Buried in the minds of those of us who are lucky is a childhood landscape, a place of magic and imagination, a safe place. It is foundational, and we will return to it in memory and dreams throughout our lives.

We shall have made such a blaze that men will remember us on the other side or the dark.

I know the best moments can never be captured on film, even as I spend nearly half my life trying to do just that.

At times of great emotion, good or bad, I find I am gone, somewhere else, watching it happen to me, a different me. I miss a lot of my own life, my own moments, because I step outside myself. I feel it all more in retrospect than in actual time.

I will continue my path, but I will keep a memory always.

Some things I can never forget. I must not. Otherwise what do I have left?