“What is the past but what we choose to remember?”

— Amy Tan , book The Bonesetter's Daughter

Variant: After all, Bao Bomu says, what is the past but what we choose to remember?
Source: The Bonesetter's Daughter

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Amy Tan 89

American novelist 1952

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

Source: Create Your Own Future: How to Master the 12 Critical Factors of Unlimited Success

“Happiness is what you choose to remember.”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

“Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Really? Human nature being what it is, isn't it hopeless to expect that we can do better regardless of whether we remember anything or not? And what if what we remember leads us to false analogies and misunderstandings? I prefer: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility."”

Errol Morris (1948) American filmmaker and writer

Or how about this: "Those who cannot condemn the past repeat it in order to remember it."
Source: The Grump (no. 1) http://www.errolmorris.com/content/grump/grump1.html

“THE best way to suppose what may come, is to remember what is past.”

George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax (1633–1695) English politician

Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections
Variant: THE best way to suppose what may come, is to remember what is past.

“We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe.”

John Henry Newman (1801–1890) English cleric and cardinal

Letter to Mrs William Froude, 27 June 1848.

“Of course I think of the past and of Paris, what else is there to remember?”

Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) American Modernist writer, poet and artist

In a 1960 letter to Natalie Barney, as quoted in Paris Was a Woman (1995) by Andrea Weiss, p. 173 http://www.case.edu/artsci/engl/VSALM/mod/brandelmcdaniel/index/library.htm

“The earth belongs to the living, Jefferson once said, and past generations do not have the right to bind future generations to comply with what those past generations chose to remember about the past and how they chose to remember it.”

Brooks D. Simpson (1957) American historian

2010s, Erasing History? Monuments and Memory (January 2016)

“The future will be what we choose to build.”

Regina E. Dugan (1963) American businesswoman, inventor, and technology developer

"The Future is What We Choose to Make", World Maker Faire, New York (September 2013) http://fora.tv/2013/09/21/the_future_is_what_we_choose_to_make
Context: We want to make things. We want to make things with our hands. We crave it. It sparks something in us, feeds our urge to create. That's why were here.
The future will be what we choose to build. We choose to build what we believe in. It's always been that way. A small group of people choose to believe in something, and then they make it so. In that order. They choose to believe in something, and then they make it so. That's the power of makers — the power to choose a new future, by believing, and making.

“Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.”

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright

Actually by the Chinese philosopher, educator and popular lecturer Dr. Tehyi Hsieh, Chinese epigrams inside out, and proverbs, 1948.
Misattributed
Variant: Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.

“It isn't a matter of forgetting. What one has to learn is how to remember and yet be free of the past.”

Aldous Huxley book Island

Source: Island

“What is the past but what we choose to remember?”

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Amy Tan 89

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