Memory Control Quotes

Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.

The mutability of the past is the central tenet of Ingsoc. Past events, it is argued, have no objective existance, but survive only in written records and in human memories. The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. And since the Party is in full control of all records, and in equally full control of the minds of its members, it follows that the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it.

I remember the very thing that I do not wish to; I cannot forget the things I wish to forget.

If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out.

Use memories. Do not let memories use you.

The process [of mass-media deception] has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt.... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies all this is indispensably necessary.

Use memories. Don't let memories use you.

The control of the past depends above all on the training of memory

When we use memories, we are creators. But when our memories use us, we become victims.

I use memories but I will not allow memories to use me.

Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality, understood as recalcitrant, inaccessible; of making it stand still. One can't possess reality, one can possess (and be possessed by) images — as, according to Proust, most ambitious of voluntary prisoners, one can't possess the present but one can possessthe past.

Memories can be everything if we choose to make them so. But you are right: you mustn't do that. That is for me, and I shall do it.

Your memory is a monster; you forget - it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you - and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!

I can't control what people think about me or how they choose to remember me.

Memory has no power but what the soul chooses to make of it.

Memory weaves and traps us at the same time according to a scheme in which we do not participate: we should never speak of our memory, for it is anything but ours; it works on its own terms, it assists us while deceiving us or perhaps deceives up to assist us.

Memory is funny. Once you hit a vein the problem is not how to remember but how to control the flow.

The memory represents to us not what we choose but what it pleases.

The proper memory for a politician is one that knows what to remember and what to forget.

You think you have a memory; but it has you!

Our memories are card indexes consulted and then returned in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.

Memory is a trustworthy servant as long as it is made to serve.

The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient-at others so bewildered and weak-and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control!

Consciousness is cerebral celebrity--nothing more and nothing less. Those contents are conscious that persevere, that monopolize resources long enough to achieve certain typical and "symptomatic" effects--on memory, on the control of behavior and so forth.