Quotessence
Home / Topics / Forgetting Quotes

Forgetting Quotes

Browse 374 quotes about Forgetting.

Forgetting Quotes

“Happy be Thy world The world forgetting by the forgotten world; The failed attempts to remember the need to forget; Naturally, Eventually, Gradually, Usually, Finally ; Thy Allies will accompany you and end this Abruptly. For Thy, it may seem simple; Oh Shameless Crook! Thy have done it before and will do it again and when thy does it -- seems that only the innocence weeps.”

“What does it remember? Itself, death as memory. An immense memory in which one dies. First to forget. To remember only where one remembers nothing. To forget: to remember everything as though by way of forgetting. There is a profoundly forgotten point from which every memory radiates. Everything is exalted in memory from something which is forgotten, an infinitesimal detail, a minuscule fissure into which it passes in its entirety.”

“Ricoeur describes forgetting as both an active and a passive act: the individual’s responsibility to keep the event remembered is just as important as the changing political environment that is beyond the individual’s control. Neglect, or an unwillingness to revisit the past, constitutes an active act of forgetting. The responsibility of the individual to give an account (or testimony) of a significant event, and the need to remember and mourn the past, form some of Ricoeur’s ethical concerns in Memory, History, Forgetting.”

“Forgetting is what nature does best. The universe is a huge forgetting machine. It erases information no matter how hard we try to hang onto it. How could it be any different? What if the memory of everything that ever happened still existed? The universe would be clogged with information, so packed with it we couldn’t move. We’d be paralyzed, because every moment we ever lived would still be with us. It would be hell.”

“Why is it important to forget? Forgetting plays a vital role in our ability to function for a deceptively simple reason. Forgetting allows us to prioritise. Anything irrelevant to our survival will take up wasteful cognitive space if we assign it the same priority as events critical to our survival.”

“Their message will never be decoded, not only because there is no key to it, but also because people have no patience to listen to it in an age when the accumulation of messages old and new is such that their voices cancel one another out. Today history is no more than a thin thread of the remembered stretching over an ocean of the forgotten, but time moves on, and an epoch of millennia will come which the inextensible memory of the individual will be unable to encompass; whole centuries and millennia will therefore fall away, centuries of painting and music, centuries of discoveries, of battles, of books, and this will be dire, because man will lose the notion of his self, and his history, unfathomable, unencompassable, will shrivel into a few schematic signs destitute of all sense.”

“Another result of the War of 1812 was the loss of part of our history. As historian Bruce Johansen put it, "A century of learning [from Native Americans] was coming to a close. A century and more of forgetting--of calling history into service to rationalize conquest--was beginning." After 1815 American Indians could no longer play what sociologists call the role of conflict partner--an important other who must be taken into account--so Americans forgot that Natives had ever been significant in our history. Even terminology changed: until 1815 the word Americans had generally been used to refer to Native Americans; after 1815 it meant European Americans.”

“Just a boy, Just a child, In a place where no one grows up; Young bodies with old minds, Dream and nightmare reign side by side, In a place where no one grows up; A time when darkness shrouded the sun, Vengeance birthed from sea and blood, Many had fallen in the war never won, In a place where no one grows up; When the boy’s heart grieved he became more of a man, When the pirate’s heart hardened with the loss of his hand, One dreadful night everything changed and feuds began, Now the ghosts from their mistakes are tied to this land, In a place where no one grows up; Just a boy, just a child, in appearance it’s true, But children can carry terrible burdens too, For sometimes stopping time doesn’t mean forever youth, Living, forgetting, loving, seething, bearing an all too heavy truth; Just a boy, Just a child, In a place where no one grows up.”

“Their message will never be decoded… because people have no patience to listen to it in an age when the accumulation of messages old and new is such that their voices cancel one another out. Today history is no more than a thin thread of the remembered stretching over an ocean of the forgotten, but time moves on, and an epoch of millennia will come which the inextensible memory of the individual will be unable to encompass; whole centuries and millennia will therefore fall away, centuries of painting and music, centuries of discoveries, of battles, of books, and this will be dire, because man will lose the notion of his self, and his history, unfathomable, unencompassable, will shrivel into a few schematic signs destitute of all sense.”

“It is not good to talk about rude things you have done willingly or mistakenly. We have to forget those things after telling about it to someone virtues. Then we have another chance to correct us. Repeatedly reminding those things will give us lot of bad results. Instead it is better to talk about best things you have done.”

“In India they tell a fable about this: There was once a great devotee of Vishnu who prayed night and day to see his God. One night his wish was granted and Vishnu appeared to him. Falling on his knees, the devotee cried out, "I will do anything for you, my Lord, just ask." "How about a drink of water?" Vishnu replied. Although surprised by the request, the devotee immediately ran to the river as fast as his legs could carry him. When he got there and knelt to dip up some water, he saw a beautiful woman standing on an island in the middle of the river. The devotee fell madly in love on the spot. He grabbed a boat and rowed over to her. She responded to him, and the two were married. They had children in a house on the island; the devotee grew rich and old plying his trade as a merchant. Many years later, a typhoon came along and devastated the island. The merchant was swept away in the storm. He nearly drowned but regained consciousness on the very spot where he had once begged to see God. His whole life, including his house, wife, and children, seemed never to have happened. Suddenly he looked over his shoulder, only to see Vishnu standing there in all his radiance. "Well," Vishnu said, "did you find me a glass of water?”