Quotes about forgetting
page 11

Tom Price (U.S. politician) photo
Henry Ward Beecher photo

“Never forget what a man says to you when he is angry.”

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) American clergyman and activist

Life Thoughts (1858)

Rutherford B. Hayes photo

“Almost everywhere and at all times the saying of St. Augustine aptly described the situation: "et paupera et inops est ecclesia — the Church is poor and helpless." The Church was powerful only when the state wanted it to be so or when pious laymen had a burning desire to make it so. In the Middle Ages especially the Church was sedulously oppressed: Popes were frequently imprisoned, made the pawns of secular rulers, persecuted, ridiculed, besieged, plundered, exiled, imprisoned and insulted. What about Canossa? People forget how the story ended, and the words of Gregory VII on his death-bed in exile: "Dilexi iustitiam et odi iniquitatem, propterea morior in exilio [I loved justice and hated injustice, therefore I die in exile]." Finally there came the Babylonian Captivity at Avignon. It is true that all of this looks quite different in the elementary schools of Kazachstan, in McKinley High and to our intellectuals, whose grasp of history is almost nil.
The situation altered very little in the nineteenth century. Once again there was a prisoner in the Vatican, Pius IX, whose body the mob yelling "Al fiume la carogna!" wanted to throw into the Tiber. This brings us to the twentieth century: Mexico City, Moabit, Dachau, Plötzensee, Auschwitz, Struthof, Carcel Modelo, Andrássy-út 66, Sremska Mitrovica, Vorkuta, Karaganda, Magadan, Lubyanka, Ocnele Mare — these are the modern Stations of the Cross of our clergy. (Pg 128)”

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) Austrian noble and political theorist

The Timeless Christian (1969)

Swami Vivekananda photo
Michael Moorcock photo
Samuel Johnson photo

“Paradise Lost' is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

The Life of Milton
Lives of the English Poets (1779–81)

Halldór Laxness photo

“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

G. K. Chesterton photo
Chrétien de Troyes photo

“Only a very base person forgets when he is done some shame or mischief.”

Chrétien de Troyes French poet and trouvère

Que molt est malvais qui oblie
S'on li fait honte ne laidure.
Source: Perceval or Le Conte du Graal, Line 2902.

Herbert Hoover photo

“[Engineering] is a great profession. There is the fascination of watching a figment of the imagination emerge through the aid of science to a plan on paper. Then it moves to realization in stone or metal or energy. Then it brings jobs and homes to men. Then it elevates the standards of living and adds to the comforts of life. That is the engineer’s high privilege.

The great liability of the engineer compared to men of other professions is that his works are out in the open where all can see them. His acts, step by step, are in hard substance. He cannot bury his mistakes in the grave like the doctors. He cannot argue them into thin air or blame the judge like the lawyers. He cannot, like the architects, cover his failures with trees and vines. He cannot, like the politicians, screen his shortcomings by blaming his opponents and hope that the people will forget. The engineer simply cannot deny that he did it. If his works do not work, he is damned. That is the phantasmagoria that haunts his nights and dogs his days. He comes from the job at the end of the day resolved to calculate it again. He wakes in the night in a cold sweat and puts something on paper that looks silly in the morning. All day he shivers at the thought of the bugs which will inevitably appear to jolt its smooth consummation.

On the other hand, unlike the doctor his is not a life among the weak. Unlike the soldier, destruction is not his purpose. Unlike the lawyer, quarrels are not his daily bread. To the engineer falls the job of clothing the bare bones of science with life, comfort, and hope. No doubt as years go by people forget which engineer did it, even if they ever knew. Or some politician puts his name on it. Or they credit it to some promoter who used other people’s money with which to finance it. But the engineer himself looks back at the unending stream of goodness which flows from his successes with satisfactions that few professions may know. And the verdict of his fellow professionals is all the accolades he wants.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

Excerpted from Chapter 11 "The Profession of Engineering"
The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: Years of Adventure, 1874-1929 (1951)

Nisargadatta Maharaj photo
Phil Brooks photo

“Okay, I get it. You people destroy billions of brain cells on a daily basis with your excess consumption of alcoholic beverages, over-the-counter as well as prescription medication—the latter of which, chances are, aren't even yours—and a veritable laundry list of substances that you shove into your soft little bodies day after day. The reason I bring up your chemically-induced mind is because I think the lot of you have forgotten my accomplishments, so please allow me to jog your ailing memory: I am the only three-time straight-edge World Heavyweight Champion in WWE history, I am the only Superstar in WWE history to win back-to-back Money in the Bank Ladder Matches at WrestleMania, and don't forget I am the man that did you, the WWE Universe, a favor that you didn't even deserve when I got rid of the Charismatic Enabler Jeff Hardy from this company…forever. But that runs a close #2 to my crowning achievement of using my Anaconda Vice and, for the first time, making the Undertaker [makes the motion on his chest] tap out—I did that. Me. I did that, and I did it all without drugs, I did it all without alcohol, and above all else, I did it all without any help from any of you. So I want somebody, anybody in a position of power to come out here right now and treat me with the respect I have earned, not only as the face of SmackDown, but the poster boy of the entire company, and as the choice of a new generation, I deserve to know who my next opponent is now that I have defeated the all-powerful Undertaker. [Waits amidst the boos of the crowd] Oh, that's right. There isn't anybody left!”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

September 25, 2009
Friday Night SmackDown

Margaret Thatcher photo
Jeremy Clarkson photo
Gene Wolfe photo

“What little I have learned in the course of a long life, regarding the gods, I have tried to forget.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Volume 3, Ch. 4
Fiction, The Book of the Long Sun (1993–1996)

Andrew Linzey photo
Daniel Kahneman photo

“He's taking an inside view. He should forget about his own case and look for what happened in other cases.”

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 23, "The outside view", page 254 (ISBN 9780141033570).

“To forget the wrongs you receive, is to remedy them.”

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 383
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave

“And in this, that philosophy begins in wonder [Plato, Theaetetus 155d], lies the, so to speak, non-bourgeois character of philosophy; for to feel astonishment and wonder is something non-bourgeois (if we can be allowed, for a moment, to use this all-too-easy terminology). For what does it mean to become bourgeois in the intellectual sense? More than anything else, it means that someone takes one's immediate surroundings (the world determined by the immediate purposes of life) so "tightly" and "densely," as if bearing an ultimate value, that the things of experience no longer become transparent. The greater, deeper, more real, and (at first) invisible world of essences is no longer even suspected to exist; the "wonder" is no longer there, it has no place to come from; the human being can no longer feel wonder. The commonplace mind, rendered deaf-mute, finds everything self-explanatory. But what really is self-explanatory? Is it self-explanatory, then, that we exist? Is it self-explanatory that there is such a thing as "seeing"? These are questions that someone who is locked into the daily world cannot ask; and that is so because such a person has not succeeded, as anyone whose senses (like a deaf person) are simply not functioning — has not managed even for once to forget the immediate needs of life, whereas the one who experiences wonder is one who, astounded by the deeper aspect of the world, cannot hear the immediate demands of life — if even for a moment, that moment when he gazes on the astounding vision of the world.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, pp. 101–102

Viggo Mortensen photo

“A lot of people can forget about you in Los Angeles.”

Viggo Mortensen (1958) American actor

On why more American actors don't take roles in foreign-language films as he does, The New York Times, " Bilingualism Steps Into a Leading Role http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/movies/viggo-mortensen-and-other-actors-take-roles-in-foreign-films.html" (March 31, 2013).

Yoshida Kenkō photo
Eric R. Kandel photo
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor photo
William Penn photo
Umberto Eco photo
Horace Mann photo

“If any man seeks for greatness, let him forget greatness and ask for truth, and he will find both.”

Horace Mann (1796–1859) American politician

Journal entry (29 October 1838)

William Wordsworth photo
Erik Naggum photo

“I guess there are some things that are so gross you just have to forget, or it'll destroy something within you. Perl is the first such thing I have known.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: can lisp do what perl does easily? http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/fc76ebab1cb2f863 (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Perl

Harun Yahya photo
Jimmy Hoffa photo

“When you go to prison they forget it's your Constitution, too.”

Jimmy Hoffa (1913–1982) American labor leader

Source: Hoffa The Real Story (1975), Chapter 12, Convict, p. 187

Bob Seger photo
André Malraux photo
Sebastian Vettel photo
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo
Bill Mollison photo
Ayn Rand photo
Dinah Craik photo
Walter Savage Landor photo

“Stand close around, ye Stygian set,
with Dirce in the boat conveyed,
Lest Charon, seeing her, forget,
That he is old and she a shade.”

Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) British writer

Epitaph on Dirce - George Orwell called it 'one of the best epitaphs in English - If I were a woman it would be my favourite epitaph-it would be the one I should like to have for myself." - quoted in Orwell:Collected Works, It is What I Think, p. 45.

Babe Ruth photo
George S. Patton photo

“A noble spirit finds a cure for injustice in forgetting it.”

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 441
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave

Elie Wiesel photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Samuel Adams photo

“Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say "what should be the reward of such sacrifices?" Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship and plough, and sow, and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood and hunt us from the face of the earth? If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom — go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!”

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher

Speech in Philadelphia (1776)
Variant: If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude <ins>better</ins> than the animat<del>ed</del><ins>ing</ins> contest of freedom — go <del>home</del> from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or <ins>your</ins> arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains <del>sit</del><ins>set</ins> lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen<del>!</del><ins>.</ins>

Ernst Gombrich photo
Paul Johnson photo
Brian Wilson photo

“All of us have the privilege of making music that helps and heals — to make music that makes people happier, stronger and kinder. Don't forget: music is God's voice.”

Brian Wilson (1942) American musician, singer, songwriter and record producer

At the induction ceremony of The Beach Boys into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (January 1988) · Video of acceptance speech http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZSAQX2uuUY

Ingo Molnar photo

“Don't forget that Linux became only possible because 20 years of OS research was carefully studied, analyzed, discussed and thrown away.”

Ingo Molnar Linux kernel programmer

From a message http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/9906.0/0746.html to the Linux Kernel mailing list in 1999.

Billy Joel photo

“Don't forget your second wind;
Sooner or later you'll get your second wind.
It's not always easy to be living in this world of pain.
You're gonna be crashing into stone walls again and again.
It's alright, it's alright.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

You're Only Human (Second Wind).
Song lyrics, Greatest Hits - Volume I & Volume II (1985)

Chiaki Mukai photo
Nigel Cumberland photo

“Successful people never forget what they love to do and are passionate about. They quickly learn to follow their own path and to make the right choices, no matter how crazy or unpopular they might appear to others. Just look at Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, who quit studying at a prestigious university to pursue his dreams.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, 100 Things Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (2016) https://books.google.ae/books?idnu0lCwAAQBAJ&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIMjAE

"Weird Al" Yankovic photo

“I'll never forget the first thing she said to me, she said: "Hey - you've got weasels on your face." Right then I knew it was true love.”

"Weird Al" Yankovic (1959) American singer-songwriter, music producer, accordionist, actor, comedian, writer, satirist, and parodist

"Albuquerque", Running with Scissors.
Song lyrics

Mark Skousen photo
Edmund Burke photo

“So to be patriots as not to forget we are gentlemen.”

Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770)

Abraham Joshua Heschel photo
Patrick Henry photo

“We should not forget that the spark which ignited the American Revolution was caused by the British attempt to confiscate the firearms of the colonists.”

Patrick Henry (1736–1799) attorney, planter, politician and Founding Father of the United States

This quotation not only has no known source, but also fails to use terminology contemporary to Patrick Henry. The earliest attribution of this phrase to Patrick Henry is after the year 2000.
Misattributed

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“Teach it me, if you can,—forgetfulness!
I surely shall forget, if you can bid me;”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Love’s Last Lesson
The Golden Violet (1827)

Vladimir Lenin photo

“We must pursue the removal of church property by any means necessary in order to secure for ourselves a fund of several hundred million gold rubles (do not forget the immense wealth of some monasteries and lauras). Without this fund any government work in general, any economic build-up in particular, and any upholding of soviet principles in Genoa especially is completely unthinkable. In order to get our hands on this fund of several hundred million gold rubles (and perhaps even several hundred billion), we must do whatever is necessary. But to do this successfully is possible only now. All considerations indicate that later on we will fail to do this, for no other time, besides that of desperate famine, will give us such a mood among the general mass of peasants that would ensure us the sympathy of this group, or, at least, would ensure us the neutralization of this group in the sense that victory in the struggle for the removal of church property unquestionably and completely will be on our side.
One clever writer on statecraft correctly said that if it is necessary for the realization of a well-known political goal to perform a series of brutal actions then it is necessary to do them in the most energetic manner and in the shortest time, because masses of people will not tolerate the protracted use of brutality. … Now victory over the reactionary clergy is assured us completely. In addition, it will be more difficult for the major part of our foreign adversaries among the Russian emigres abroad, i. e., the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Milyukovites, to fight against us if we, precisely at this time, precisely in connection with the famine, suppress the reactionary clergy with utmost haste and ruthlessness.
Therefore, I come to the indisputable conclusion that we must precisely now smash the Black Hundreds clergy most decisively and ruthlessly and put down all resistance with such brutality that they will not forget it for several decades. … The greater the number of representatives of the reactionary clergy and the reactionary bourgeoisie that we succeed in shooting on this occasion, the better because this "audience" must precisely now be taught a lesson in such a way that they will not dare to think about any resistance whatsoever for several decades.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Letter to Comrade Molotov for the Politburo (19 March 1922) http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/soviet.exhibit/ae2bkhun.html
Variant translation:
It is precisely now and only now, when in the starving regions people are eating human flesh, and hundreds if not thousands of corpses are littering the roads, that we can (and therefore must) carry out the confiscation of church valuables. … I come to the categorical conclusion that precisely at this moment we must give battle to the Black Hundred clergy in the most decisive and merciless manner and crush its resistance with such brutality that it will not forget it for decades to come. The greater the number of representatives of the reactionary clergy and reactionary bourgeoisie we succeed in executing for this reason, the better.
As translated in The Unknown Lenin : From the Secret Archive (1996) edited by Richard Pipes, pp. 152-4
1920s

Tom Petty photo

“And I'd show you stars you never could see
Baby, it couldn't have been that easy to forget about me.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Even the Losers
Lyrics, Damn The Torpedoes (1979)

Thomas Jefferson photo
Babe Ruth photo

“Pitchers—real pitchers— know that their job isn't so much to keep opposing batsmen from hitting as it is to make them hit it at someone. The trouble with most kid pitchers is that they forget there are eight other men on the team to help them. They just blunder ahead, putting everything they have on every pitch and trying to carry the weight of the whole game on their shoulders. The result is that they tire out and go bad along in the middle of the game, and then the wise old heads have to hurry out and rescue them. I've seen a lot of young fellows come up, and they all had the same trouble. Take Lefty Grove over at Philadelphia, for instance. There isn't a pitcher in the league who has more speed or stuff than Lefty. He can do things with a baseball that make you dizzy. But when he first came into the league he seemed to think that he had to strike out every batter as he came up. The result was he'd go along great for five or six innings, and them blow. And he's just now learning to conserve his strength. In other words, he's learning that a little exercise of the noodle will save a lot of wear and tear on his arm.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

"Chapter III," Babe Ruth's Own Book of Baseball (1928), pp. 32-33; reprinted as "Babe Ruth's Own Story — Chapter III: Pitching the Keynote of Defense; The Pitcher's Job; Why Young Hurlers Fail," https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=r0sbAAAAIBAJ&sjid=J0sEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6011%2C3899916 in The Pittsburgh Press (December 23, 1928), p. 52

Robert Graves photo
Grant Morrison photo
John Davies (poet) photo
Samuel Pepys photo

“Go now, go, but forget not the land that first folded you to its peaceful bosom; and from Colchis' conquered shores bring back hither thy sails, I pray thee, by this Jason whom thou leavest in my womb.”
I, memor i terrae, quae vos amplexa quieto prima sinu, refer et domitis a Colchidos oris vela per hunc utero quem linquis Iasona nostro.

Source: Argonautica, Book II, Lines 422–424

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu photo

“We should not forget that the value of seeing lies in the information capacity of vision.”

Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis (1914–1975) Greek architect

Source: Building Entopia - 1975, Chapter 9, The house group, p. 120

Basil of Caesarea photo
Marlen Esparza photo
Arshile Gorky photo
Sarah Kofman photo
Glen Cook photo
Dylan Thomas photo

“When all my five and country senses see,
The fingers will forget green thumbs and mark
How, through the halfmoon's vegetable eye,
Husk of young stars and handfull zodiac,
Love in the frost is pared and wintered by.”

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) Welsh poet and writer

" When All My Five And Country Senses See http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Dylan_Thomas/1149" (1939)

Charlotte Brontë photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Alex Salmond photo
André Breton photo
Theresa May photo
Mary McCarthy photo
Robert M. Pirsig photo

“I think metaphysics is good if it improves everyday life; otherwise forget it.”

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 20

Warren E. Burger photo
Robert Erskine Childers photo

“Being shot with volcanic suddenness into the Navy at an hour's notice is a queer experience, but I am beginning to get used to the life and to forget that I ever had a moustache or a tweed suit.”

Robert Erskine Childers (1870–1922) Irish nationalist and author

Written aboard HMS Engadine in 1914, cited in " The Riddle Of Erskine Childers " By Andrew Boyle, Hutchinson, London, (1977), pg. 200.
Literary Years and War (1900-1918)

Louis-ferdinand Céline photo
Poul Anderson photo
Ben Hecht photo
André Maurois photo
Hassan Nasrallah photo
Gertrude Stein photo
Stephen R. Covey photo
Alexander McCall Smith photo
John Milton photo

“Let not England forget her precedence of teaching nations how to live.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce Preface: "TO THE PARLAMENT OF ENGLAND" https://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/ddd/parliament/text.shtml (1643)

Arthur Schopenhauer photo

“One can forget everything, everything, only not oneself, one's own being.”

Alles, alles kann einer vergessen, nur nicht sich selbst, sein eigenes Wesen.
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life