mnemonics Quotes

What distinguishes a great mnemonist, I learned, is the ability to create lavish images on the fly, to paint in the mind a scene so unlike any other it cannot be forgotten. And to do it quickly. Many competitive mnemonists argue that their skills are less a feat of memory than of creativity.

I have a hard time memorizing stuff. I'm always in the process of writing a new song, so trying to learn a new one takes a minute.

The art of remembering is the art of thinking. When we wish to fix a new thing in either our own mind or a pupil's, our conscious effort should not be so much to impress and retain it as to connect it with something else already there. The connecting is the thinking; and, if we attend clearly to the connection, the connected thing will certainly be likely to remain within recall.

My favourite poem is the one that starts 'Thirty days hath September' because it actually tells you something.

I remember everything, even the dates. But I don't want others to remember the details, just the image.

I am not naturally inclined to history or geography - maybe that's why I like to sing about it, because it helps me remember.

Remembering is the most overrated thing. Forgetting is far superior.

One of the metaphors of the book is the carpet. Not just the flying carpet, but the carpet as a woven surface in which many repetitions and motifs recur and mirror one another. This is very much reflected within the stories: they have borders within borders, repeated motifs which change. They have their feet in oral conventions, and for the mnemonics, the storyteller needs to have a structure in order to remember the stories.

Dates are hard to remember because they consist of figures; figures are monotonously unstriking in appearance, and they don't take hold, they form no pictures, and so they give the eye no chance to help. Pictures are the thing. Pictures can make dates stick.

I looked around the iTunes store and came across Dr. Moku's Hiragana Mnemonics. Thirty minutes later I had memorized all 46 hiragana. Now my 9-year-old is learning them, and having a lot of fun.

Rhyme is a mnemonic device, an aid to the memory. And some poems are themselves mnemonics, that is to say, the whole purpose of the poem is to enable us to remember some information.

Some memorizers arbitrarily associate each playing card with a familiar person or object, so that the king of clubs is represented by, say, Tony Danza. The grand masters associate each card with a person, an action, or an object so that every group of three cards can be converted into a sentence.

You don't need a time machine if you know how to remember.

When I want my men to remember something important, to really make it stick, I give it to them double dirty.

What appear to be the most valuable aspects of the theoretical physics we have are the mathematical descriptions which enable us to predict events. These equations are, we would argue, the only realities we can be certain of in physics; any other ways we have of thinking about the situation are visual aids or mnemonics which make it easier for beings with our sort of macroscopic experience to use and remember the equations.