“The past is really unknowable, but it’s got to be knowable enough so that we can seek forgiveness for our crimes…”

— Ariel Dorfman

On confronting and atoning for the past in “Ariel Dorfman: 'Not to belong anywhere, to be displaced, is not a bad thing for a writer'” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/09/ariel-dorfman-not-to-belong-anywhere-to-be-displaced-is-not-a-bad-thing-for-a-writer in The Guardian (2018 May 9)

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Ariel Dorfman 4

Chilean writer 1942

Gerald G. Jampolsky (1925) American writer and psychiatrist

Source: Love Is Letting Go of Fear

“Nothing erases the past. There is repentance, there is atonement, and there is forgiveness. That is all, but that is enough.”

Ted Chiang The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate

Source: The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate

“If we are generous enough, we can stretch our souls everywhere and everywhen else. If we succeed in doing so, we shall discover that our present embraces the past and the future and that the whole world is our province.”

George Sarton (1884–1956) American historian of science

Preface.
A History of Science Vol.2 Hellenistic Science and Culture in the Last Three Centuries B.C. (1959)

“I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last.”

Charlotte Brontë book Jane Eyre

Helen Burns to Jane (Ch. 6)
Jane Eyre (1847)

“We are quick to forgive and forget about the past, or our memories when we find the present satisfying.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“When women love, they forgive everything, even our crimes; when they do not love, they cannot forgive anything, not even our virtues.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Lorsque les femmes nous aiment, elles nous pardonnent tout, même nos crimes; lorsqu'elles ne nous aiment pas, elles ne nous pardonnent rien, pas même nos vertus!
La Muse du Département http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/La_Muse_du_d%C3%A9partement_-_II_-_34 (1843), translated by James Waring, part II, ch. XXXIV (part XIII in the translated version).

“We can forgive, but we cannot forget. That quote is mine. Those that forget their past are sentenced not to have a future.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

About the Holocaust, at a meeting with evangelical pastors in Rio de Janeiro, on 11 April 2019. Bolsonaro: Brazil will vote ‘in line’ with Israel, US at UN Human Rights Council https://www.timesofisrael.com/bolsonaro-brazil-will-vote-in-line-with-israel-us-at-un-human-rights-council/. The Times of Israel (14 April 2019).