Quotes About Omission

A speech is something you say so as to distract attention from what you do not say.

Information is always being left out, therefore, when speech is written down. And conversely, information is always being added when a written text is spoken aloud.

He made not even the briefest mention, indeed no mention at all, of the Nazis' extermination of Europe's Jews.

Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse or omission.

It turns out we're very good at not seeing things

The chief problem in historical honesty is not outright lying. It is omission or de-emphasis of important data. The definition of 'important', of course, depends on one's values.

A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.

But nowhere in the file had anyone said, "Oh, and by the way, he runs like a gazelle with an espresso addiction." At least not in the parts I'd skimmed.

Just as there can be a hole in these narratives, a memoir can be as much about what's forgotten as what's remembered.

The worst thing is not to figure in a book at all, when there was a possibility of doing so.

What we call a poem is mostly what is not there on the page. The strength of any poem is the poems that it has managed to exclude.

I hope that posterity will judge me kindly, not only as to the things which I have explained, but also to those which I have intentionally omitted so as to leave to others the pleasure of discovery.

Although distortion of the past is widespread, the most common travesty is one of omission, wherein populist leaders neglect to mention the crimes committed by their own side or recollect them in such a way that evades accepting full responsibility. That politicians are so able to evoke historical arguments in these ways results from a prior failure of the society to engage in a full and frank encounter with past wrongdoings.

Describe what is meant by "forgetting.

This reflects a general tendency. People are more willing to lie by omission than commission. If I am selling you a used car, I do not feel obligated to mention that the car is burning a lot of oil, but if you ask me explicitly: "Does this car burn a lot of oil?" you are likely to wangle an admission from me that yes, there has been a small problem along those lines. To get at the truth, it helps to ask specific questions.

Conviction is knowing what to add and what to remove for a performance system we fully understand.

Just because you don't see me doesn't mean I wasn't there

but I felt as if I'd just been Photoshopped out of my own book cover. And if there was one thing I wasn't used to, it was being ignored

It should be an explosion of truth. Its strength lies in what it leaves out just as much as what it puts in, if not more.

Jesus, we forgot the goddamn ape!

You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say

She had wanted to cover up the core of her decisions by hiding facts or watering them down. But she must have been wise enough to realize, no matter her motivations, no matter the labyrinth, every omission left some sign of its presence.

O motherwhat have I left outO motherwhat have I forgotten

As a democratic society, Malawi has a moral obligation to ensure that each and every injustice, whether through acts of commission or omission, is met with deliberate and tangible action.