Forgetting Process Quotes

Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition of our existence. If the lore of the transmigration of souls is a true one, then these, between their exchange of bodies, must pass through the sea of forgetfulness.

The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple.

Language buries, but does not resurrect.

For once a thing is known, it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten.

There's a place in the brain for knowing what cannot be remembered.

Why is it that we are born remembering, and live forgetting?

Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition for our existence.

It is sure the hardest science to forget!

Elephants can remember, but we are human beings and mercifully human beings can forget.

Forget: Refuse to dwell; let go and loosen one's hold, particularly on memory. To forget is an active - not passive - endeavor.

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

You don't just forget things overnight.

It is forgetting, not remembering, that is the essence of what makes us human. To make sense of the world, we must filter it. "To think," Borges writes, "is to forget.

Series of syllables which have been learned by heart, forgotten, and learned anew must be similar as to their inner conditions at the times when they can be recited.

The critics tend to forget their own answers after a while.

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

You know how it is: as soon as you decide to forget something, your brain comes to the conclusion that it's the most fascinating thing in the world.

And gradually his memory slipped a little, as memories do, even those with so much love attached to them; as if there is an unconscious healing process within the mind which mends up in spite of our desperate determination never to forget.

I usually do films, and you do two months and then forget about it.

One of the strangest aspects of living with certain kinds of memory loss is knowing that the forgetting is happening.

Throughout history, knowledge rises and falls, ebbs and flows. What once was known is forgotten again, lost in time, sometimes for centuries, only to be rediscovered ages later.

Selective memory is surely one of nature's most effective ways of ensuring the survival of our species.

Can you stop your memory on a dime, put it in reverse, and spin it in another direction the way you can reverse direction on a tape recorder? We cannot forget on command. So we just have to let the forgetting happen as it will; we shouldn't rush it, and we certainly should not doubt the genuineness of our forgiving if we happen to remember. The really important thing is that we have the power to forgive what we still do remember.

We are that strange species that constructs artifacts intended to counter the natural flow of forgetting.

Paper acts as an eraser on the mind, as soon as you look at what you've written.