Memory Manipulation Quotes

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.

The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.

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

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day be day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except the endless present in which the party is always right.

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

The more Ronald Reagan repeated a story, the more he believed it and the more he resisted information that undermined premises.

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

What we remember is probably fiction anyway.

I think that's the greatest gift one can have: point of view. You know? I've come to believe that if you have a bad memory of something, change it.

Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.

The idea of implanting memories where by the implantee couldn't tell the difference between a real experience and a fantasy experience was really cool. And his ideas of technology - do we control technology or does technology begin to control us? His work hasn't aged a day it seems.

We must address, individually and collectively, moral and ethical issues raised by cutting-edge research in artificial intelligence and biotechnology, which will enable significant life extension, designer babies, and memory extraction.

But it's funny how the memory works and how sometimes we just belive whatever we want.

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

However, for story reasons, we needed to represent them in certain ways. One of the things that sort of blew me away that I didn't know when we started is that memories are completely susceptible to change. And this is, you know, one of the many reasons why certain people are trying to get it taken out - eyewitness testimony in court cases because it's very unreliable.

Memory is a political act. Forgetfulness is the handmaiden of tyranny.

We've outsourced our memories to digital devices, and the result is that we no longer trust our memories. We see every small forgotten thing as evidence that they're failing us.

I will have spent my life trying to understand the function of remembering, which is not the opposite of forgetting, but rather its lining. We do not remember. We rewrite memory much as history is rewritten. How can one remember thirst?

Every time someone forgets, someone else disappears,' my brother wrote.

The most difficult story that I've ever been involved in breaking on any of my shows was 'The Constant' episode of 'Lost,' which was when Desmond was consciousness-traveling.

Memory is revisionist, you know. 'The Houston Kid' was based on true things that happened. But I know - from writing a memoir that I've been working on for awhile - that reconstructing memory is revisionism.

Plus, according to my mother, memories change like people do, especially if there's enough alcohol involved-Aphrodite

Creative memory is the historian's most subtle opponent.

People forgot; it was in the nature of people to forget, to blur boundaries, to retell stories to come out the way they wanted them to come out, to remember things as how they ought to be instead of how they were.

Memory is the most malicious cutter of all, preserving, recasting, panning in slow motion across the awful bits so that we retain every detail.