“Memory is the only afterlife I have ever believed in. But the forgetting inside us cannot be stopped. We are programmed to betray.”

— Michael Ignatieff , book Scar Tissue

Source: Scar Tissue

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Memory is the only afterlife I have ever believed in. But the forgetting inside us cannot be stopped. We are programmed…" by Michael Ignatieff?

Michael Ignatieff 21

professor at Harvard Kennedy School and former Canadian pol… 1947

Sam Tanenhaus (1955) American writer

Source: Literature Unbound

“I shall never eat duck again. I cannot believe I used to like duck. The duck betrayed me.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Vampires, Scones, and Edmund Herondale

“Having chosen this foolishness, I was a free being. How could the world ever stop me, how could I betray myself, if I was not afraid?”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

Source: An American Childhood

“I have tried to keep memory alive… I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

“Not unexpectedly, no one believes that everything is useless, and with good reason. We all live in relative frameworks, and within those frameworks uselessness is far wide from the norm. A potato masher is not useless if one wants to mash potatoes. For some people, a system of being that includes an afterlife of eternal bliss may not seem useless. They might say that such a system is absolutely useful because it gives them the hope they need to make it through this life. But an afterlife of eternal bliss is not and cannot be absolutely useful simply because you need it to be. It is part of a relative framework and nothing beyond that, just as a potato masher is only part of a relative framework and is only useful if you need to mash potatoes. Once you had made it through this life to an afterlife of eternal bliss, you would have no use for that afterlife. Its job would be done, and all you would have is an afterlife of eternal bliss—a paradise for reverent hedonists and pious libertines. What is the use in that? You might as well not exist at all, either in this life or in an afterlife of eternal bliss. Any kind of existence is useless. Nothing is self-justifying. Everything is justified only in a relative potato-masher sense.”

Thomas Ligotti (1953) American horror author

The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror (2010)

“In the afterlife, people never forget to feed the dog.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Friðrik the elf doctor
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Two: The Palace of the Summerland

“A moral society is committed to memory: I believe in memory. The Greek word alethia means Truth, Things that cannot be forgotten. I believe in those things that cannot be forgotten and because of that so much in my work deals with memory… What do all my books have in common? A commitment to memory.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

"Building a Moral Society", Chamberlin Lecture at Lewis & Clark College (1995)
Context: An immoral society betrays humanity because it betrays the basis for humanity, which is memory. An immoral society deals with memory as some politicians deal with politics. A moral society is committed to memory: I believe in memory. The Greek word alethia means Truth, Things that cannot be forgotten. I believe in those things that cannot be forgotten and because of that so much in my work deals with memory... What do all my books have in common? A commitment to memory.

“One is either a German or a Christian. You cannot be both… We don’t want people who keep one eye on the life in the hereafter. We need free men who feel and know that God is in themselves… Do you really believe the masses will ever be Christian again? Nonsense! Never again. That tale is finished… They will betray their God to us. They will betray anything for the sake of their miserable little jobs and incomes.”

Hermann Rauschning (1887–1982) German politician

Source: The Voice of Destruction (1940), pp. 49-50

“We should have stories in common, I found myself thinking. We should have stories, and jokes no one understands, and memories that we know will stay alive because neither of us will let the other forget.”

Kamila Shamsie (1973) Pakistani writer

“All we have to believe with is our senses, the tools we use to perceive the world: our sight, our touch, our memory. If they lie to us, then nothing can be trusted. And even if we do not believe, then still we cannot travel in any other way than the road our senses show us; and we must walk that road to the end.”

Neil Gaiman book American Gods

Source: American Gods (2001), Ch. 6

“Memory is the only afterlife I have ever believed in. But the forgetting inside us cannot be stopped. We are programmed to betray.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Michael Ignatieff 21

Related quotes

Related topics