Memory Bias Quotes

The older I get, the more clearly I remember things that never happened.

History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember. All other history defeats itself.

A man's memory is bound to be a distortion of his past in accordance with his present interests, and the most faithful autobiography is likely to mirror less what a man was than what he has become.

The narrative fallacy addresses our limited ability to look at sequences of facts without weaving an explanation into them, or, equivalently, forcing a logical link, an arrow of relationship, upon them. Explanations bind facts together. They make them all the more easily remembered; they help them make more sense. Where this propensity can go wrong is when it increases our impression of understanding.

Kindnesses are easily forgotten; but injuries! what worthy man does not keep those in mind?

You can read 50 great things about yourself, but the one bad thing will be what you remember most.

Memory fades, memory adjusts, memory conforms to what we think we remember.

If a man owes me money, I never seem to forget. But if I do the owing, I somehow never remember.

You'll remember every damn loss. But the wins? You don't necessarily remember.

I don't remember all my successes, but I do remember failures.

You don't remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened.

One's memories aren't what actually happened - they're very subjective. You can always make it much better, right?

They always remember the last thing you do. They don't remember the things before.

The past actually happened but history is only what someone wrote down.

I am always at a loss at how much to believe of my own stories.

What we remember is probably fiction anyway.

If you ask two people to remember a specific event, the stories are going to vary wildly because we always make ourselves out to be the hero.

As to memory, it is known that this frail faculty naturally lets drop the facts which are less flattering to our self-love - when it does not retain them carefully as subjects not to be approached, marshy spots with a warning flag over them.

People forget the good, because the bad has more punch.

If you didn't remember something happening, was it because it never had happened? Or because you wished it hadn't?

Memory is slippery. It bends to our understanding of the world, twists to accommodate our prejudices. It is unreliable. Witnesses seldom remember the same things. They identify the wrong people. They give us the details of events that never happened. Memory is slippery, but my memories suddenly feel slipperier.

A man forgets his good luck next day, but remembers his bad luck until next year.

I'm a Top 40 record guy. I remember the hits and don't remember the flops. Something in my brain blocks them out.

Memory is a great artist. For every man and for every woman it makes the recollection of his or her life a work of art and an unfaithful record.

I'm so suspicious of our own understanding of the past. I just think that your mind plays absolute tricks on you and fools you every minute of every day. And so when you're talking about the past, you're talking about something that never happened. At least it didn't happen the way you think it happened.