Edward Coke Quotes

Since human memory is short and does not suffice for a crowd of things, the authority of those who preceded our age, the divine emperors and kings, has decreed that those things were to be written down which the progress of fleeting time generally removes from the knowledge of men.

The palest ink is better than the best memory.

If there was a day that history was not recorded, then the history of one hundred days would be in peril.

Pale ink is better than the most retentive memory.

I think it's important to have some documentation of the past.

If you didn’t write it down, you didn’t say it.

Pale ink is better than the most retentive memory. If it's written down, you can look it up. Just be damn sure you write it down.

There's something very reassuring... about the written record.

Man was very fortunate to have invented the book. Without it, the past would completely vanish, and we would be left with nothing, we would be naked on earth.

A historian is battling all the time to remember as much as possible.

He listens well who takes notes.

If it's hard to remember, it'll be difficult to forget.

I don't think forgetting is an important feature of human memory. I think it's important to be able to remember things accurately.

I've never kept a record of anything.

I have a great memory.

Things written, remain.

If You Do Not Write It, You Never Said It

How is it that we remember the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not remember how often we have recounted it to the same person?

I have never been able to remember the number of my driver's license, and there have been times when I couldn't even remember my own telephone number, but when I hear a song, sometimes only once, I never forget the melody or the lyric.

Some people say they use images to help them remember intricacies. Others say they just remember. If they are able to form an image of the face, it is because they remember how it was: it is not that an image guides memory, but that memory produces an image, or the sense of imaging. We have no agreed way to talk clearly about such things.

Memory is a big one: our ability to use the memory and move things in and out efficiently - that affected what we were able to do more than anything.

Long before we created libraries, or even books, poetry was the way we humans remembered who we were, a primary means of documenting and contemplating our lives.

Our memory is and always will be as good as time travel gets, and in the meantime time will do the travelling for us.

I've always subscribed to an old Chinese proverb that the palest ink is better than the best memory.

I did keep a travel diary once and it was a big mistake. All I remember of that trip is what I bothered to write down.