“How are we to reconcile our supreme duty towards memory with the need to forget that is essential to life? No generation has had to confront this paradox with such urgency. The survivors wanted to communicate everything to the living: the victim's solitude and sorrow, the tears of mothers driven to madness, the prayers of the doomed beneath a fiery sky.”
Hope, Despair, and Memory (1986)
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Elie Wiesel 155
writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and … 1928–2016Related quotes

“With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves, let me forget about today until tomorrow.”
Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Mr. Tambourine Man

“To these crocodile tears they will add sobs, fiery sighs, and sorrowful countenance.”
Section 2, member 2, subsection 4.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part III
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 71.

“Life will always be sorrowful. We can't change it, but we can change our attitude toward it.”
Source: A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

Antithesis
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part IV - Memory and Design