memory reliability Quotes

The palest ink is better than the best memory.

It is therefore necessary that memorable things should he committed to writing, and not wholly betaken to slippery memory which seldom yields a certain reckoning.

Plus, according to my mother, memories change like people do, especially if there's enough alcohol involved-Aphrodite

Memory is a wonderfully useful tool, and without it judgement does its work with difficulty; it is entirely lacking in me.... Now,the more I distrust my memory, the more confused it becomes. It serves me better by chance encounter; I have to solicit it nonchalantly. For if I press it, it is stunned; and once it has begun to totter, the more I probe it, the more it gets mixed up and embarrassed. It serves me at its own time, not at mine.

...yet a memory cannot be trusted, for so much of the experience of the past is determined by the experience of the present.

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

Memory is a great betrayer.

Memory is a trustworthy servant as long as it is made to serve.

I'm always fascinated by the way memory diffuses fact.

I have some memories of certain things that happened in high school when I was stoned out of my mind, but I talked with other people about them, and I trusted the aggregated memories.

Did you ever think about all of the nights you lived through and can't remember The ones that were so mundane your brain just didn't bother to record them. Hundreds, maybe thousands of nights come and go without being preserved by our memory. Does that ever freak you out? Like maybe your mind recorded all of the wrong nights?

He who is not sure of his memory, should not undertake the trade of lying.

Can I remember "I remember lots," I say. How much of what I remember is true is another matter.

Memory is an illusion, nothing more. It is a fire that needs constant tending.

It's an ethical pact I've made with myself and with the reader - not to invent. And when I can't remember, I say I can't remember. I'm just appalled by the memoirs published by people who regurgitate dialogue, conversations from when they were small children, and they go on for three or four pages. I can't even remember what we said to each other ten minutes ago! How can I remember what was said sixty years ago? It's not possible.

If memories were indeed like what a camera records, they could be forgotten, or they could fade so that they are no longer clear and vivid. But it would be difficult to explain how people could have memories that are both clear and vivid while also being wrong. Yet that happens, and it is not infrequent.

Pale ink is better than the most retentive memory.

One can never be sure whether a very early memory is a real memory or just the recollection of something which you were told happened.

It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on memory alone.

Every time you recall a memory, you're basically making another copy of it and at that same point it is susceptible to new changes and adaptations. So, you know, if you remember from when you were, you know, in second grade and there was Christmas and you got a present from your grandfather and your mom was wearing a red dress, that may or may not all have happened.

The problem with an autobiography is that all these extra factors make it difficult. You don't want to hurt people's feelings. You don't know how much you can trust your memory. You don't want it to be self-serving. And you have all these issues about how to present yourself. All these factors make it harder to do than a novel.

It is notorious that the memory strengthens as you lay burdens upon it, and becomes trustworthy as you trust it.

As far as my memory being reliable, at the risk of sounding like some sort of gorgeous two-headed monster with the voices of Dave Barry and Erma Bombeck, I do think that women, like elephants, remember everything and love peanuts.

To learn from experience, we must remember it, and, for a variety of reasons, memory is a faithless friend.