Charles Proteus Steinmetz Quotes

Our memory is childish and it saves only what we need.

A good memory is one trained to forget the trivial.

Information defines your personality, your memories, your skills.

I am a sponge. I don't write things down.

I have, compartmentalized in my head, one file for the NFL, one for college basketball and one for golf. They contain everything I've ever read, watched and learned.

Every one complains of a poor memory, no one of a weak judgment.

The very first thing an executive must have is a fine memory. Of course it does not follow that a man with a fine memory is necessarily a fine executive. But if he has the memory he has the first qualification, and if he has not the memory nothing else matters.

Bricks without straw are more easily made than imagination without memories.

Women and elephants never forget.

[...]my memory is reasonably good—unlike yours, dear sir!” “Mine is erratic,” he said imperturbably. “I remember only what interests me.

A person must have a good memory to keep the promises he has made. A person must have a strong imagination to be able to have pity. So closely is morality tied to the quality of the intellect.

Memory selects single important images, just as the camera does. In that manner both are able to isolate the highest moments of living.

Memories were short and history unkind. It was the way of the world.

Excellent memories are often coupled with feeble judgments.

I suppose being the kind of creatures we [people] are, we like to censor the past, and are selective, or want to be selective about the things that we remember. If you want to destroy people, destroy their memory, destroy their history.

When the print revolution occurred 400 years ago, human beings lost a certain mental capacity, including a sense of memory. In Africa today, you meet people who still carry everything in their heads, the way we used to. We rely on telephone books, address books. We have to look up everything.

Memory exercised in a particular way is a natural gift of poetic genius. The poet above all else, is a person who never forgets certain sense impressions which he has experienced and which he can relive again as though with all their original freshness.

Memory is the miser of the mind; forgetfulness the spendthrift.

The recollections of an older man are different from those of a younger man. What seemed vital at forty may lose its significance at seventy. We manufacture stories, after all, from the fleeting sensory material that bombards us at every instant, a fragmented series of pictures, conversations, odors, and the touch of things and people. We delete most of it to live with some semblance of order, and the reshuffling of memory goes on until we die.

I really rely a lot more on memory. I'm definitely not as good of a sight reader.

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

The girl traced the outline of her lover's shadow so she would always have a record of how he looked.

To the extent that experience is the sum of our memories and wisdom the sum of experience, having a better memory would mean knowing not only more about the world, but also more about myself.

The only way we could remember would be by constant re-reading, for knowledge unused tends to drop out of mind. Knowledge used does not need to be remembered; practice forms habits and habits make memory unnecessary. The rule is nothing; the application is everything.

I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles.