Quotes about forgetting
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“I, Pancho Villa, was a loyal man that destiny brought the world to fight for the good of the poor and that I will never betray nor forget my duty.”

Pancho Villa (1878–1923) Mexican revolutionary

World, Fight

“Forget the takes. Takes are cheap shots. Anyone can do a goddamn take. […] You don't have to be a genius to draw a take. It's emotions— the full range of emotions— that works in Clampett's cartoons.”

John Kricfalusi (1955) Canadian animator

Wheeler W. Dixon (2001), "Creating Ren and Stimpy (1992)", Collected Interviews: Voices from Twentieth-Century Cinema (SIU Press): 89

Drawing

“WOKING (vb.) To enter the kitchen with the precise determination to perform something only to forget what it is just before you do it.”

Douglas Adams book The Meaning of Liff

The Meaning of Liff (1983)

“Without a flicker of hesitatoin I inejected the morphine into my arm. My insecurity, frefulness and timidity were swept away completely; I turned into an expansively optimistic and fluent talker. The injection mademe forget how weak my body was, and I applied myself energetically to my cartoon.”

Osamu Dazai book No Longer Human

The Third Notebook: Part Two
No Longer Human

“Man's sin is in his failure to live what he is. Being the master of the earth, man forgets that he is the servant of God.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

As quoted in The World's Religions (1976) by Sir James Norman Dalrymple Anderson, p. 61

God, Failure

“Man forgets. God forgives. Man forgets God's Truth. God forgives man's ignorance.”

Sri Chinmoy (1931–2007) Indian writer and guru

Songs of the Soul (1971)

God, Truth, Forgiveness

“You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.”

Charlie Parker (1920–1955) American jazz saxophonist and composer

As quoted in Acting Is a Job: Real-life Lessons About the Acting Business (2006) by Jason Pugatch, p. 73; this statement has occurred with many different phrasings, including: "Learn the changes, then forget them."

Learning

“Grandfather, Great Spirit, once more behold me on earth and lean to hear my feeble voice. You lived first, and you are older than all need, older than all prayer. All things belong to you — the two-leggeds, the four-leggeds, the wings of the air and all green things that live. You have set the powers of the four quarters to cross each other. The good road and the road of difficulties you have made to cross; and where they cross, the place is holy. Day in and day out, forever, you are the life of things.
Therefore, I am sending a voice, Great Spirit, my Grandfather, forgetting nothing you have made, the stars of the universe and the grasses of the earth.”

Black Elk (1863–1950) Oglala Lakota leader

Black Elk Speaks (1961)

Life, Star, Grass, Universe

“Then indeed, pierced by grief's bitterest pang, she clutched the hand of Jason and humbly besought him thus: "Remember me, I pray, for never, believe me, shall I be forgetful of thee. When thou art gone, tell me, I beg, on what quarter of the heaven must I gaze?"”
Tum vero extremo percussa dolore arripit Aesoniden dextra ac summissa profatur: 'sis memor, oro, mei, contra memor ipsa manebo, crede, tui. quantum hinc aberis, dic quaeso, profundi? quod caeli spectabo latus?

Gaius Valerius Flaccus book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica, Book VII, Lines 475–479

Art

“A fine thing: suddenly to forget about one’s history, one’s past, to stop feeling that one’s present happiness is endangered by what one used to be.”

Peter Handke (1942) Austrian writer, playwright and film director

Source: Das Gewicht der Welt [The Weight of the World], p. 7

Happiness, Feeling, History, Past

“If children had teachers for judgment and eloquence as they have for languages, if their memory was exercised less than their energy or their natural genius, if instead of deadening their vivacity of mind we tried to elevate the free scope and impulses of their souls, what might not result from a fine disposition? As it is, we forget that courage, or love of truth and glory are the virtues that matter most in youth; and our one endeavor is to subdue our children’s spirits, in order to teach them that dependence and suppleness are the first laws of success in life.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), pp. 185-186.

Love, Life, Children, Truth

“If you desire to discover peace and consolation for your soul and to serve God truly, do not find your satisfaction in what you have left behind, because in that which now concerns you you may be as impeded as you were before, or even more. But leave as well all these other things and attend to one thing alone that brings all these with it (namely, holy solitude, together with prayer and spiritual and divine reading), and persevere there in forgetfulness of all things.”

John of the Cross (1542–1591) Spanish mystic and Roman Catholic saint

The Sayings of Light and Love

God, Peace, Soul, Solitude

“Baby, if I made you mad
For something I might have said,
Please, let's forget the past,
The future looks bright ahead.
Don't be cruel to a heart that's true.
I don't want no other love,
Baby it's just you I'm thinking of.”

Elvis Presley (1935–1977) American singer and actor

Don't Be Cruel, written by Otis Blackwell and Elvis Presley (1956)
Song lyrics

Love, Thinking, Past, Future

“Forget the telly, we just go to the crib, watch a movie in the Jacuzzi and smoke Ls while you do me.”

The Notorious B.I.G. (1972–1997) American rapper

Song lyrics, Ready to Die (1994), "Big Poppa"

“What was seen can never be unseen, and I will never forget it, nor will I forgive it.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), Thoughts at 18, Forgiveness

Forgiveness

“The Rock: I have so much love and respect for the fans. I'll never forget where I came from. I love the business. I grew up in the business. And everyone always asks me, from Letterman to Stone Phillips, what I miss about wrestling. Hands down, I miss the interaction with the fans. Outside of the ring I loved it, too. I mean, how hard is it to sign an autograph? Don't be an asshole to your fans. And there's many [in WWE] that won't, which is bullshit. But inside the ring, just that energy and feeding off that energy is great. There's something so special about it. And every night I would just have a blueprint of what I would say and rely so much on ad-libbing and waiting to see what happens when I get out there and let it materialize organically and see what happens. Every night was a different crowd and they gave me so much energy, and I'll always love that and always miss that for sure.”

Dwayne Johnson (1972) American actor and professional wrestler

Interview with WWE.com (October 2005).

Love, Business, Waiting, Night

“If you forget yourself, you become the universe.”

Hakuin Ekaku (1686–1769) Japanese Zen Buddhist master

As quoted in The Awakening Artist: Madness and Spiritual Awakening in Art by Patrick Howe

Universe

“I think Marilyn is bound to make an almost overwhelming impression on the people who meet her for the first time. It is not that she is pretty, although she is of course almost incredibly pretty, but she radiates, at the same time, unbounded vitality and a kind of unbelievable innocence. I have met the same in a lion-cub, which my native servants in Africa brought me. I would not keep her, since I felt that it would in some way be wrong…I shall never forget the almost overpowering feeling of unconquerable strength and sweetness which she conveyed. I had all the wild nature of Africa amicably gazing at me with mighty playfulness.”

Karen Blixen (1885–1962) Danish writer

Written of her experience with actress Marilyn Monroe in a letter to the American author, Fleur Cowles Meyer, in 1961. As quoted in Fragments, by Stanley Buchthal and Bernard Comment (2010)

People, Way, Feeling, Nature

“Good, to forgive;
Best, to forget!
Living, we fret;
Dying, we live.”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

Dedication to La Saisiaz.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Forgiveness

“O Great Beyond, O the keen call of thy flute! I forget, I ever forget, that I have no wings to fly, that I am bound in this spot evermore.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

5 <br class="br"> The Gardener http://www.spiritualbee.com/love-poems-by-tagore/ (1915) <br class="br">Context: I am restless. I am athirst for faraway things. My soul goes out in a longing to touch the skirt of the dim distance. O Great Beyond, O the keen call of thy flute! I forget, I ever forget, that I have no wings to fly, that I am bound in this spot evermore.

Flying

“Some say cavalry and others claim
infantry or a fleet of long oars
is the supreme sight on the black earth.
I say it is

the one you love. And easily proved.
Didn't Helen, who far surpassed all
mortals in beauty, desert the best
of men, her king,

and sail off to Troy and forget
her daughter and her dear parents? Merely
Aphrodite's gaze made her readily bend
and led her far

from her path. These tales remind me now
of Anaktoria who isn't here,
yet I
for one

would rather see her warm supple step
and the sparkle in her face than watch all
the chariots in Lydia and foot soldiers armored
in glittering bronze.”

Sappho (-630–-570 BC) ancient Greek lyric poet

Fragment 16 Voigt
The Willis Barnstone translations, Supreme Sight on the Black Earth

Love, Men, Beauty, Parent

“Your voice is my voice. Do not forget it!”

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) Turkish army officer, revolutionary, and the first President of Turkey

Statement made to those going to foreign nations or international conferences, as quoted by F. Rıfkı Atay; also quoted (in Turkish) in Atatürk ve çevresindekiler [Atatürk and his Entourage] (1995) by Kemal Arıburnu, p. 128
Variant translation: Your voice is my voice. Do not forget!

“Humanity needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and, without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit.”

Marie Curie (1867–1934) French-Polish physicist and chemist

As quoted in Astrophysics of the Diffuse Universe (2003) by Michael A. Dopita and Ralph S. Sutherland
Context: Humanity needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and, without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit. Without doubt, these dreamers do not deserve wealth, because they do not desire it. Even so, a well-organized society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely consecrated to research.

Men

“Our freedom to doubt was born out of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle: permit us to question — to doubt — to not be sure. I think that it is important that we do not forget this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

The Value of Science (1955)
Context: The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is still in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty — some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain. Now, we scientists are used to this, and we take it for granted that it is perfectly consistent to be unsure, that it is possible to live and not know. But I don’t know whether everyone realizes this is true. Our freedom to doubt was born out of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle: permit us to question — to doubt — to not be sure. I think that it is important that we do not forget this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained.

Question, Thinking, Freedom, Strong

“Everyone talks about rock these days; the problem is they forget about the roll.”

Keith Richards (1943) British rock musician, member of The Rolling Stones

Problem

“It's not easy to entrust oneself to God's mercy. I know He has a very special capacity for forgetting our mistakes. God forgets, but I don't.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

God

“You never forget your first love. Until your second love rushes in.”

Teodor Burnar

Love, Making love

“We must never forget that it is through our actions, words, and thoughts that we have a choice.”

Sogyal Rinpoche (1947–2019) Tibetan Dzogchen lama of the Nyingma tradition

“Remembering everything is not the only solution. Perhaps, forgetfulness can make us live in peace too.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Peace

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

People, Feeling, Learning

“The biggest mistake of the average wage earner is forgetting that no company has or will ever have a human heart.”

José Baroja (1983) Chilean author and editor

Source: Radiorama de Occidente. "La Otra Historia". Rock & Pop 1480 AM. Guadalajara, Mexico.

Heart

“… forgiving is not the same as forgetting.”

Cecily von Ziegesar book Notorious

Source: Notorious

Forgiveness

“I don't know if this is true to you but for me
sometimes it gets so bad
that anything else
say like
looking at a bird on an overhead
power line
seems as great as a Beethoven symphony.
then you forget it and you're back
again.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: Bone Palace Ballet

Bird

“Forgive but do not forget, or you will be hurt again. Forgiving changes the perspectives. Forgetting loses the lesson.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Forgiveness, Change, Hurt

“You seem to forget that I am married, and the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Life, Marriage

“If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be one nation gone under.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

God

“We often get caught up in our own reactions and forget the vulnerability of the person in front of us.”

Sharon Salzberg (1952) American writer

Source: The Force of Kindness: Change Your Life with Love & Compassion

Personality

“In this bright future you can't forget your past.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

Past, Future

“A certain amount of volatility and drama can me healthy and keep things fun and interesting if you're willing at any moment during a fight to say, 'This means nothing. I love you, let's forget about it.”

Anthony Kiedis book Scar Tissue

Source: Scar Tissue

Love, Fight

“There are things that have to be done and you do them and you never talk about them. You don't try to justify them. They can't be justified. You just do them. Then you forget it.”

Mario Puzo The Godfather

Source: The Godfather

“To forget is the secret of eternal youth. One grows old only through memory. There's much too little forgetting.”

Erich Maria Remarque book Three Comrades

Source: Three Comrades

Secret, Youth, Memory

“We are much too much inclined in these days to divide people into permanent categories, forgetting that a category only exists for its special purpose and must be forgotten as soon as that purpose is served.”

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) English crime writer, playwright, essayist and Christian writer

Source: Are Women Human? Astute and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society

People

“If pain must come, may it come quickly. Because I have a life to live, and I need to live it in the best way possible. If he has to make a choice, may he make it now. Then I will either wait for him or forget him.”

Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)
Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Life, Pain, Way, Waiting

“The general root of superstition : namely, that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and forget and pass over the other.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

Sylva Sylvarum Century X (1627)
Source: The Collected Works of Sir Francis Bacon
Context: It is true that may hold in these things, which is the general root of superstition; namely, that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and forget and pass over the other.

Men, Memory