“I used to assume history and memory would always triumph over temporary aberrations and return to their rightful place. It now appears the opposite is true.”

—  Yan Lianke

"On China's State-Sponsored Amnesia"

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I used to assume history and memory would always triumph over temporary aberrations and return to their rightful place.…" by Yan Lianke?
Yan Lianke photo
Yan Lianke 6
Chinese novelist and satirist 1958

Related quotes

Michel Foucault photo

“Homosexuality appears as one of the forms of sexuality when it was transposed from the practice of sodomy onto a kind of interior androgyny, a hermaphroditism of the soul. The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Vol I: La volonté de savoir
An Introduction. NY: Pantheon. Translated from French by Robert Hurley. Page 43
History of Sexuality (1976–1984)

George Soros photo

“The prevailing wisdom is that markets are always right. I take the opposition position. I assume that markets are always wrong. Even if my assumption is occasionally wrong, I use it as a working hypothesis.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Soros on Soros (1995)
Context: The prevailing wisdom is that markets are always right. I take the opposition position. I assume that markets are always wrong. Even if my assumption is occasionally wrong, I use it as a working hypothesis. It does not follow that one should always go against the prevailing trend. On the contrary, most of the time the trend prevails; only occasionally are the errors corrected. It is only on those occasions that one should go against the trend. This line of reasoning leads me to look for the flaw in every investment thesis.... I am ahead of the curve. I watch out for telltale signs that a trend may be exhausted. Then I disengage from the herd and look for a different investment thesis. Or, if I think the trend has been carried to excess, I may probe going against it. Most of the time we are punished if we go against the trend. Only at an inflection point are we rewarded.

Walter Raleigh photo

“[History] hath triumphed over time, which besides it nothing but eternity hath triumphed over.”

Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer

The History of the World (1614), Preface

Lester B. Pearson photo

“My own views began to change before the next Nazi move, the occupation of Austria in [March] 1938…. No longer was it possible for me to believe that Nazism was a temporary aberration in German politics, that the good sense of the German people would soon take care of the Fuehrer, and that the greater danger to peace was French over-reaction to Hitler's moves, with the United Kingdom supporting such reaction. This feeling was replaced by the fear of aggressive war brought about by the policy of a German regime which now must be considered as evil and savage and an immediate menace to freedom and to peace. This regime could not be allowed to triumph in Europe, for its triumph would be a threat to free men everywhere.”

Lester B. Pearson (1897–1972) 14th Prime Minister of Canada

Memoirs, Volume One

Shaun Chamberlin photo

“Have you noticed how over recent decades, our expectations of the future have gradually shifted? How maybe we used to quietly assume that life for the next generation would be better than ours, and now quietly assume the opposite? That is not the mark of a civilisation that is making good choices. That is not a show that we need to get back on the road.”

Shaun Chamberlin

"My coronavirus dilemma – weighing crises against each other?", Dark Optimism (2020) http://www.darkoptimism.org/2020/03/12/my-coronavirus-dilemma-weighing-crises-against-each-other/

Robert Sheckley photo

“For love, as he knew it, was an aberration, a form of temporary insanity, a short-lived state of autosuggestion.”

Robert Sheckley (1928–2005) American writer

Source: The 10th Victim (1965), Chapter 15 (p. 132)

Colum McCann photo

“There are moments we return to, now and always. Family is like water - it has a memory of what it once filled, always trying to get back to the original stream.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book One: All Respects to Heaven, I Like it Here

Brian W. Aldiss photo

“I'm lucky that SFWA has such a short memory. I was always the Young Turk, the gadfly. Part of the New Wave, although I didn't fit in there either! I spent years, and two histories, putting the so-called Old Guard in their place, and now I'm one of them!”

Brian W. Aldiss (1925–2017) British science fiction author

Locus interview (2000)

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn appearances, and you always may. The force of character is cumulative.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Context: Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future. If I can be firm enough to-day to do right, and scorn eyes, I must have done so much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn appearances, and you always may. The force of character is cumulative.

“Everything is temporary, but memories are permanent.”

Umair Ahmad (1997) Entrepreneur, Writer, Researcher & Film Producer

ITF Transport Outlook 2019, (May 22, 2019), OECD Publishing, ISBN 9282108309, 9789282108307

Related topics