Leon Trotsky Quotes

A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.

On the basis of the familiar experience that that which is learned with difficulty is better retained, it would have been safe to prophesy such an effect from the greater number of repetitions.

Memory is more indelible than ink.

When you're in the moments of greatest stress, those are the most memorable.

The military and the Marine Corps prepared me to be numb to the stress.

My mother just wanted me to forget it. So, of course, every word was immediately, irrevocably branded into my brain.

The secret of a good memory is attention, and attention to a subject depends upon our interest in it. We rarely forget that which has made a deep impression on our minds.

It is certain that memory contains not only philosophy, but all the arts and all that appertain to the use of life.

There's always pressure and that pressure is earned.

I have a theory that I did most of my observing probably before I was twenty, stored it, and am still drawing on it.

I once knew a writer who, after saying beautiful things about the sea, passed through a Pacific hurricane, and he became a changed man.

Unless we have that moment of chaos, followed by the emotional release of realization, nothing will be remembered.

Estragon: I'm like that. Either I forget right away or I never forget.

I was born with a nervous breakdown.

Do certain events in our lives leave a permanent mark, freezing a piece of us in time, and that becomes a touchstone that we measure the rest of our lives against?

The more intelligible a thing is, the more easily it is retained in the memory, and counterwise, the less intelligible it is, the more easily we forget it.

Some things you cannot wish away or think away. They become part of you when you remember them.

When it comes to memories, the good and the bad never balance.

Let everyone see the blood,' he said. 'Don't clean it up. That's the only way people remember.'... I could see the blood inside my head. It was with me forever, whether or not I wanted to forget.

The very effort to forget teaches us to remember.

It is how people respond to stress that determines whether they will profit from misfortune or be miserable.

To forgive and forget means to throw away dearly bought experience.

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted; it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience.

It is no learning to understand what you do not retain.

When things get unbearable, I wrap myself into a tight ball and shut my eyes. Every muscle in my body is tense. I open my eyes and I'm still where I was when I closed them to escape. Nothing's changed.