Selective Amnesia Quotes

Historical mythmaking is made possible only by forgetting.

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

The past always seems somehow more golden, more serious, than the present. We tend to forget the partisanship of yesteryear, preferring to re-imagine our history as a sure and steady march toward greatness.

We choose to forget aspects of ourselves and then we forget that we've forgotten.

The extraordinary ability of a woman to forget is not the same as the talent of a lady not to be able to remember.

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

I prefer selective memories. Some songs and some co-workers are all that I want to remember, as memories are not always so pleasant.

Powerful men in particular suffer from the delusion that human beings have no memories. I would go so far as to say that the distinguishing trait of powerful men is the psychotic certainty that people forget acts of infamy as easily as their parents birth

We may with advantage at times forget what we know.

All my cop/gangster dramas have been spaced out, but somewhere, the films in which I played the bad guy were extremely successful, so people are under the impression that I play only such roles. I call it selective amnesia.

In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering.

The liar often suffers from amnesia. Amnesia is the silence of the unconscious.

There are people and places and events you'd prefer to forget or at least gloss over. In the end, you can slap a pretty label on it - like serendipity or fate. Or you can believe that it's just the random way life unfolds.