Quotes about eraser (215 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.”

John W. Gardner (1912–2002) American politician

Quoted in Matthew M. Radmanesh, Cracking the Code of Our Physical Universe, p. 269.

Life , Art , Drawing , Wise

“The feminists had destroyed the old image of woman, but they could not erase the hostility, the prejudice, the discrimination that still remained.”

Betty Friedan book The Feminine Mystique

Source: The Feminine Mystique

Hostility

“Do not erase the designs the child makes in the soft wax of his inner life.”

Maria Montessori (1870–1952) Italian pedagogue, philosopher and physician

Life

“You can hide memories, but you can't erase the history that produced them.”

Haruki Murakami book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (2013)

History , Memory

“To enforce the lies of the present, it is necessary to erase the truths of the past.”

George Orwell book 1984

Attributed to Orwell by Keith Olbermann on MSNBC (27 September 2006), this seems to be a paraphrase of some of the statements in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Misattributed
Source: 1984

Truth , Past

“Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.”

Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) German theologian

“A fool is someone whose pencil wears out before its eraser does.”

Marilyn vos Savant (1946) US American magazine columnist, author and lecturer

As quoted in The Truth in Words: Inspiring Quotes for the Reflective Mind (2002) by Paras, p. 92

Fools

“Our Twentieth Century has proved to be more cruel than preceding centuries, and the first fifty years have not erased all its horrors.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Nobel lecture (1970)
Context: Our Twentieth Century has proved to be more cruel than preceding centuries, and the first fifty years have not erased all its horrors. Our world is rent asunder by those same old cave-age emotions of greed, envy, lack of control, mutual hostility which have picked up in passing respectable pseudonyms like class struggle, racial conflict, struggle of the masses, trade-union disputes. The primeval refusal to accept a compromise has been turned into a theoretical principle and is considered the virtue of orthodoxy. It demands millions of sacrifices in ceaseless civil wars, it drums into our souls that there is no such thing as unchanging, universal concepts of goodness and justice, that they are all fluctuating and inconstant. Therefore the rule — always do what's most profitable to your party. Any professional group no sooner sees a convenient opportunity to BREAK OFF A PIECE, even if it be unearned, even if it be superfluous, than it breaks it off there and then and no matter if the whole of society comes tumbling down.

“The earth is speaking to us, but we can't hear because of all the racket our senses are making. Sometimes we need to erase them, erase our senses. Then - maybe - the earth will touch us. The universe will speak. The stars will whisper.”

Jerry Spinelli book Stargirl

Source: Stargirl

Star , Sense , Universe

“There are moments in life that you wish with all your heart you could take back. Like, just erase from existence. Like, if you could, you'd erase yourself right out of existence too, just to make that moment not exist.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: It's Not Summer Without You

Life , Heart

“I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Speak, Memory

Source: Speak, Memory

Time

“History cannot be erased or altered. Because that would mean killing yourself.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: 色彩を持たない多崎つくると、彼の巡礼の年

History

“I would love to be erased from our association with Pearl Jam or the Nymphs and other first time offenders.”

Kurt Cobain book Journals

Source: Journals

Love , Time

“Everything stated or expressed by man is a note in the margin of a completely erased text. From what's in the note we can extract the gist of what must have been in the text, but there's always a doubt, and the possible meanings are many.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

“Tis better people think you a fool, then open your mouth and erase all doubt.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Variously attributed to Lincoln, Elbert Hubbard, Mark Twain, Benjamin Franklin and Socrates
Misattributed
Variant: It is better to be silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.

People , Fools , Thinking

“The next tide will erase the way through the mudflats,
and everything will be again equal on all sides;
but the small, far-out island already has its
eyes closed; bewildered, the dike draws a circlearound its inhabitants who were born
into a sleep in which many worlds
are silently confused, for they rarely speak,
and every phrase is like an epitaph.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book New Poems

Die nächste Flut verwischt den Weg im Watt,
und alles wird auf allen Seiten gleich;
die kleine Insel draußen aber hat
die Augen zu; verwirrend kreist der Deich<p>um ihre Wohner, die in einem Schlaf
geboren werden, drin sie viele Welten
verwechseln schweigend, denn sie reden selten,
und jeder Satz ist wie ein Epitaph
Die Insel I (The Island I) (as translated by Cliff Crego)
Neue Gedichte (New Poems) (1907)

World , Way , Sleep , Drawing

“if you hope at this juncture to cut the Gordian knots of socialism and communism by appealing to the center of Western capitalism, you will, far from remedying any of the ills of your society, commit a mistake which those to come will have to erase. For if Marxism has come to a deadlock in its social and economic policies, capitalism has also bogged down.”

Ruhollah Khomeini (1902–1989) Religious leader, politician

Letter to Russian Premier Gorbachev, January 1989. http://politicalquotes.org/node/68478
Foreign policy

Hope , Communication

“Especially is this true where the lynching is accompanied with torture. There are certain hideous sights which when once seen can never be wholly erased from the mental retina. The mere fact of having seen them implies degradation. This is a thousandfold stronger when, instead of merely seeing the deed, the man has participated in it. Whoever in any part of our country has ever taken part in lawlessly putting to death a criminal by the dreadful torture of fire must forever have the awful spectacle of his own handiwork seared into his brain and soul. He can never again be the same man.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, Letter to Winfield T. Durbin (1903)

Death , Soul , Parting , Country

“The dressing up and puffing up of the individual erases the lineaments of protest.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

Source: On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening (1938), p. 283

“Some paintings become famous because, being durable, they are viewed by successive generations, in each of which are likely to be found a few appreciative eyes. I know a painting so evanescent that it is seldom viewed at all, except by some wandering deer. It is a river who wields the brush, and it is the same river who, before I can bring my friends to view his work, erases it forever.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“August: The Green Pasture”, p. 51.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "August: The Green Pasture," "September: The Choral Copse," "October: Smoky Gold," and "October: Red Lanterns"

Success , Painting

“One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.”

Golda Meir book My Life

My Life (1975), p. 231

Past

“The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.”

Alexander Hamilton book The Farmer Refuted

The Farmer Refuted (1775)

Nature

“The minute we leave south Lebanon we will have to erase the word Hezbollah from our vocabulary, because the whole idea of the State of Israel versus Hezbollah was sheer folly from the outset. It most certainly no longer will be relevant when Israel returns to her internationally recognized northern border.”

Amos Oz (1939–2018) Israeli writer, novelist, journalist and intellectual

"Try a Little Tenderness" (interview) in Ha'aretz, March 17, 2000.

Idea

“This silly playlet seemed to satisfy them completely as a picture of what they were doing, why they were doing it, and who was against them, and why some people were against them. It was a beautifully simple picture these procession leaders had. It was as though a navigator, in order to free his mind of worries, had erased all the reefs from his maps.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Player Piano

Source: Player Piano (1952), Chapter 21 (p. 212)

People

“Most actors possess an intuitive side. Actually, the further away I am from the character, the less work I have to do. It takes so much more energy to detach yourself from your own life references that might cross wires with your character's. I think it's cheating for me to ever use my life references in conjunction with my characters. It's my reaction transferred to the character, which isn't good. What I have to do is erase those things and then find something else. I can't stand in front of a camera and let anything of myself come through or I'm betraying the character's complete trueness. There are some actors who just use themselves. They can wear their ego on their sleeve and it looks great. I can't do that.”

River Phoenix (1970–1993) American actor, musician, and activist

US Magazine (1991)

Life , Thinking , Cheating

“It must be immense, this silence, in which sounds and movements have room, and if one thinks that along with all this the presence of the distant sea also resounds, perhaps as the innermost note in this prehistoric harmony, then one can only wish that you are trustingly and patiently letting the magnificent solitude work upon you, this solitude which can no longer be erased from your life; which, in everything that is in store for you to experience and to do, will act as an anonymous influence, continuously and gently decisive, rather as the blood of our ancestors incessantly moves in us and combines with our own to form the unique, unrepeatable being that we are at every turning of our life.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Ten (26 December 1908)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

Life , Thinking , Decision , Solitude

“My English teacher wanted to flunk me in Junior High(Damn)…thanks a lot, next semester I'll be 35…I smacked him in his face with an eraser, chased him with a stapler and told him to change the grade on the paper.”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"My Name Is" (Track 2).
1990s, The Slim Shady LP (1999)

Teachers , Change

“I consider as lovers of books not those who keep their books hidden in their store-chests and never handle them, but those who, by nightly as well as daily use thumb them, batter them, wear them out, who fill out all the margins with annotations of many kinds, and who prefer the marks of a fault they have erased to a neat copy full of faults.”

Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, and theologian

Letter to an unidentified friend (1489), as translated in Collected Works of Erasmus (1974), p. 58

Books , Lovers

“José Martí once said, “Liberty is the right of every man to be honest.” Today, I am being honest with you. We can never erase the history between us, but we believe that you should be empowered to live with dignity and self-determination. Cubans have a saying about daily life: “No es facil” –- it’s not easy. Today, the United States wants to be a partner in making the lives of ordinary Cubans a little bit easier, more free, more prosperous.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Statement on Cuban policy (December 2014)
Context: To the Cuban people, America extends a hand of friendship. Some of you have looked to us as a source of hope, and we will continue to shine a light of freedom. Others have seen us as a former colonizer intent on controlling your future. José Martí once said, “Liberty is the right of every man to be honest.” Today, I am being honest with you. We can never erase the history between us, but we believe that you should be empowered to live with dignity and self-determination. Cubans have a saying about daily life: “No es facil” –- it’s not easy. Today, the United States wants to be a partner in making the lives of ordinary Cubans a little bit easier, more free, more prosperous.
To those who have supported these measures, I thank you for being partners in our efforts. In particular, I want to thank His Holiness Pope Francis, whose moral example shows us the importance of pursuing the world as it should be, rather than simply settling for the world as it is; the government of Canada, which hosted our discussions with the Cuban government; and a bipartisan group of congressmen who have worked tirelessly for Alan Gross’s release, and for a new approach to advancing our interests and values in Cuba.

Life , History

“Everyone occasionally is haunted by the past and should consider; no amount of remorse will erase the past and no amount of apprehension will alter the future.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

Past , Future

“I haven't calculated why white signifies completeness, and it's not an impeccable colour, but a colour that lacks itself. Black is comprehensive and black is full of obliviousness. It is a true completion. This world is a downside. It's just a tiny point in the gloaming twilight. Denial is inclusive and it's about the idealised assertives and defensives, furthermore protecting the aspects of the destructive, senseless actualities of current counterinsurgencies. The representation of one fulfillment is more pleasant than all the blemishes and the settlement of this one imperfection. There are defects in this world, and on the other hand, hegemony. "Why don't you erase the perception, only negritude?" “How can I take this cobblestone and consolidate it?” You will be fully embossed with this extraordinary world. You will see such translucent melancholy. You will feel as if you can use adhesive in the last memoir of this one humankind and you will only experience the last time before, you will see the emptiness for one instant and then the bright glistening light way ahead of you. - Rok Seo.”

RokSeo

Time , Light , Way , World

“What the exploiter needs is that the will and intelligence of the victim be disengaged from the projects of resistance and escape but that they not be simply broken or destroyed. Ideally, the dis-integration and mis-integration of the victim should accomplish the detachment of the victim's will and intelligence from the victim’s own interests and their attachment to the interests of the exploiter. This will effect a displacement or dissolution of self-respect and will undermine the victim’s intolerance of coercion. With that, the situation transcends the initial paradigmatic form or structure of coercion; for if people don’t mind doing what you want them to do, then, in a sense, you can’t really be making them do it. In the limiting case, the victim’s will and intelligence are wholly transferred to a full engagement in the pursuit of the dominating person’s interests. The “problem” had been that there were two parties with divergent interests; this sort of solution (which is very elegant, as that word is used in logic) is to erase the conflict by reducing the number of interested parties to one. This radical solution can properly be called “enslavement.””

Marilyn Frye book The Politics of Reality

Source: The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (1983), p. 60

Personality , Intelligence , People , Problem

“V had a passing thought that she used the word "anyway" like an eraser on a crowded chalkboard. She said it whenever she needed to clear off the things she'd just shared to make room for more.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Unbound

Source: Lover Unbound

“Nothing is as real as a dream. Responsibilities need not erase it. Duties need not obscure it. Because the dream is within you, no one can take it away.”

Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American author

Dreams

“Shotgunning anybody in this room would be the moral equivalent of killing a car, a vacuum cleaner, a Barbie doll. Erasing a computer disk. Burning a Book. Probably that goes for killing anybody in the world. We're all such products.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Books , World , Cars

“When I erase a word with a pencil, where does it go?”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

“the constant shower of the sun's mane
erases the footprints on thin ice
do not fear deception for the world lies atop deception

~Toushiro Hitsugaya”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

World , Fear , Sun

“You couldn't erase the past. You couldn't even change it. But sometimes life offered you the opportunity to put it right.”

Ann Brashares book Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood

Source: Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood

Life , Change , Past

“Self-esteem can be so exhausting. I want to cut my hair, change my clothes, erase the pimple from the near-tip of my nose, and strengthen my upper-arm definition, all in the next hour.”

David Levithan Boy Meets Boy

Source: Boy Meets Boy

Change , Clothes

“For me, the person I was becoming when we left was erased, and another one was created.”

Esmeralda Santiago (1948) Puerto Rican writer and actor

Source: When I Was Puerto Rican

Personality

“Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased," Polo said. "Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it, or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little.”

Italo Calvino book Invisible Cities

Source: Invisible Cities

Memory

“You couldnt erase everything that caused you pain with recollection. Every memory was valuable; even the bad ones”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Pain , Memory

“I gave him a kick and he stepped back onto the third rail. Exploding, flaming eraser! This is why moms tell you to stay away from the third rail, but it sure came in handy this time.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

Moms , Time

“They erase my face with a layer of pale makeup and draw my features back out.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Drawing

“You don't have to be afraid of looking into my face. We've done nothing to each other that time will not erase.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Time

“You can hide memories, but you can’t erase the history that produced them.” Sara looked directly into his eyes. “If nothing else, you need to remember that. You can’t erase history, or change it. It would be like destroying yourself.”

Haruki Murakami book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

History , Memory , Change

“You have me like a drawing, erased, coloured in, untitled, signed by your tongue.”

Carol Ann Duffy (1955) British writer and professor of contemporary poetry

Source: Selected Poems

Drawing

“They [Erasers] were bad fliers," Angel chimed in, "And in their minds, they weren't all kill the mutants, like they usually are. They were like, remember to flap!”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: School's Out—Forever

Angels

“Time may heal wounds, but it does not erase the scars.”

Jane Yolen book Briar Rose

Source: Briar Rose (1992), Chapter 12 (p. 72)

Time

“We are all what our pasts have made us,” Catarina said. “The accumulation of thousands of daily choices. We can change ourselves, but never erase what we’ve been.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Lost Herondale

Change , Past

“Clouds are poems, and the most moving poems linger on the blackboard so long, written in cursive so lovely, they also exist inside our fingertips. We never really erase them at the end of the lesson.”

Ann Beattie (1947) Short story writer, novelist, professor

Source: Walks with Men

Love

“What kind of human person has a favorite eraser?”

William Goldman Marathon Man

Source: Marathon Man

Personality

“Call me crazy, but there's just something cheering about seeing huge raptors tear into Eraser flesh.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

Tear

“Sometimes I find the best way of getting from one place to another is simply to erase everything and begin again.”

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

Way

“There are memories that time does not erase… Forever does not make loss forgettable, only bearable.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Memory , Loss , Time

“Thinking that it would console him, she took a piece of charcoal and erased the innumerable loves that he still owed her for, and she voluntarily brought up her own most solitary sadnesses so as not to leave him alone in his weeping.”

Gabriel García Márquez book One Hundred Years of Solitude

Source: One Hundred Years of Solitude

Love , Sadness , Thinking

“Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author’s phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.”

Guy Debord (1931–1994) French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker and founding member of the Situationist International (SI)

Source: Society of the Spectacle (1967), Ch. 8, sct. 207 (confer Comte de Lautréamont, Poésies II, 1870).

Idea , Falseness

“We all make mistakes. That's why my pencil has an eraser.”

Chris Grabenstein book Tilt-a-Whirl

Source: Tilt-a-Whirl

“For the first forty days a child
is given dreams of previous lives. Journeys, winding paths,
a hundred small lessons
and then the past is erased.”

Michael Ondaatje (1943) Canadian writer

Source: Handwriting

Dreams , Past

“She was so quiet. So reflective. And she could erase herself, her spirit, with a swiftness that truly startled, when she knew the people around her could not respect it.”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

People

“You eventually erase her contact info from your phone but not the pictures you took of her in bed while she was naked and asleep, never those.”

Junot Díaz book This Is How You Lose Her

Source: This Is How You Lose Her

“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

Forgiveness , Past

“Even though we both know that our loved one will never so much as look our way we can’t erase that small something within us that continues to hope in vain.”

Matsuri Hino Japanese manga artist

Love , Hope , Way

“Once you learn what life is about, there is no way to erase that knowledge. If you try to do something else with your life, you will always sense that you are missing something”

James Redfield (1950) American author, lecturer, screenwriter and film producer

Source: The Celestine Prophecy: A Pocket Guide to the Nine Insights

Life , Way , Knowledge , Sense

“But there are forces that don't let you turn back and undo things, because to do so would be to deny what is already in motion, to unwrite and erase passages, to shorten the arc of a story you don't own.”

Salvador Plascencia The People of Paper

Source: The People of Paper

“Honey! Bring down a copy of my will - and an eraser!”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

“God is more powerful than anybody's past, no matter how wretched. He can make us forget - not by erasing the memory but by taking the sting and paralyzing effect out of it”

Jim Cymbala (1959) author, pastor

God , Memory , Past , Forgetting

“You think you want to know something, and then once you do, all you can think about is erasing it from your mind.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Thinking

“We cannot go backward. We cannot erase time and events. But we can go forward, hand in hand, hope in our hearts and love lighting our way.”

Sharon Shinn (1957) American science fiction writer

Source: Jenna Starborn

Love , Hope , Way , Light

“You… are… a… fridge… with wings,' Fang ground out, punching an Eraser hard with every word. 'We're… freaking… ballet… dancers.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: School's Out—Forever

“In a futile attempt to erase our past, we deprive the community of our healing gift. If we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame, our inner darkness can neither be illuminated nor become a light for others.”

Brennan Manning (1934–2013) writer, American Roman Catholic priest and United States Marine

Source: Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging

Fear , Communication , Light , Past

“No moon, sun, diamond, hands —
fingertip, dot, ray, gauze, sea.
pine green, pink glass, eye,
mine, eraser, mud, mother, I am coming.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

Source: The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait

Sun , Sea

“The line between the public life and the private life has been erased, due to the rapid decline of manners and courtesy. There is a certain crudeness and crassness that has suddenly become accepted behavior, even desirable.”

Fannie Flagg (1944) American actress, comedian and author

Source: Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!

Life , Behavior

“If I were to draw on a paper what gym does for me, I would make one dot and then I would erase it.”

Elizabeth Berg (1948) American novelist

Source: Joy School

Drawing

“Without dignity, identity is erased.”

Laura Hillenbrand book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Source: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

“Life would be a lot easier if conversations were rewindable and erasable, like videos. Or if you could instruct people to disregard what you just said, like in a courtroom.”

Sophie Kinsella book The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic

Source: Confessions of a Shopaholic

Life , People

“Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased.”

Italo Calvino book Invisible Cities

Source: Invisible Cities

Memory

“To me, making a tape is like writing a letter – there's a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again, and I wanted it to be a good one.”

Nick Hornby (1957) English novelist

“This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best.
Night, sleep, and the stars.”

Walt Whitman book Fulles d'herba

Source: Leaves of Grass

Books , Art , Soul , Star

“Even divorce, she thought, cannot erase all the bonds forged by years of marriage. Long after the papers are signed, decrees notarized, the ties still remain. And the most powerful tie of all is written in a child's flesh and blood.”

Tess Gerritsen book Body Double

Source: Body Double

Marriage

“Without dignity, identity is erased. In its absence, men are defined not by themselves, but by their captors and the circumstances in which they are forced to live.”

Laura Hillenbrand book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Source: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Men

“Just because you didn't speak the facts out loud didn't erase their existence. Silence was just a quieter way to lie.”

Jodi Picoult book The Tenth Circle

Source: The Tenth Circle

Lie , Way , Silence

“In aesthetic discourse, no interpretative-critical analysis, doctrine or programme is superseded, is erased, by any later construction. The Copernican theory did correct and supersede that of Ptolemy. The chemistry of Lavoisier makes untenable the early phlogiston theory. Aristotle on mimesis and pathos is not superseded by Lessing or Bergson. The Surrealist manifestos of Breton do not cancel out Pope's Essay on Criticism though they may well be antithetical to it.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Source: Real Presences (1989), II: The Broken Contract, Ch. 3 (p. 76).

“My greatest satisfaction comes from helping to erase the old opinion about Latin American and black ballplayers. People had the wrong opinion. They never questioned our ability but they considered us inferior in our station of life. Simply because many of us were poor, we were thought to be low class. Even our integrity was questioned. I don't blame the fans for that; I blame the writers. They made it look like we were something different entirely from the white players. We're not. We're the same.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Sports Parade"
Other, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1971</big>

Life , People , Question , Help

“They have retired into the Judiciary as a stronghold. There the remains of federalism are to be preserved and fed from the Treasury; and from that battery all the works of republicanism are to be beaten down and erased.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to J. Dickinson (19 December 1801)
1800s, First Presidential Administration (1801–1805)

“The tools of the academic designer are a piece of paper and a pencil with an eraser. If a mistake is made, it can always be erased and changed. If the practical-reactor designer errs, he wears the mistake around his neck; it cannot be erased. Everyone sees it.”

Hyman George Rickover (1900–1986) United States admiral

Paper Reactors, Real Reactors (1953)

Change

“Love alone was left, as a great image of a dream that was erased.”

Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869) French writer, poet, and politician

The Valley (1820), st. 9

Love , Dreams

“A keyhole speech is very simple, especially mine. First it states the issues. An issue is just a difference of opinion, which is why we put erasers on horse races. And as I always say, as long as we have issues, we can’t have everything. Second, the speech goes on to attack the present administration and show how it has ruined the country. Then it goes on to attack the other candidates and show how they’ll keep it ruined, and generally builds up a warm and friendly atmosphere.”

Gracie Allen (1902–1964) American actress and comedienne

Source: How to Become President (1940), Ch. 5 : Issues and how to pick them

Horse , Country

“For what fortress, what city, in the wide extent of the Roman empire, can hope to exist, secure and impregnable, if it is our pleasure that it should be erased from the earth?”

Attila (406–453) King of the Hunnic Empire

As quoted by Edward Gibbon (1781), The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. III, chapter 34

Pleasure , Hope

“Like the sun I brighten each atom's cheek;
I cannot be pinpointed: I am too manifest.
I speak with every tongue, listen with all ears,
but marvel at this: My ears and tongue are erased.
Since in all the world only I exist
above and below, no likeness of me can be found.”

Fakhruddin 'Iraqi (1213–1289) Persian philosopher

Fakhruddin Iraqi: Divine Flashes (1982)

World , Sun

“Rollers on the beach, wind in the pines, the slow flapping of herons across sand dunes, drown out the hectic rhythms of city and suburb, time tables and schedules. One falls under their spell, relaxes, stretches out prone. One becomes, in fact, like the element on which one lies, flattened by the sea; bare, open, empty as the beach, erased by today’s tides of all yesterday’s scribblings.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh book Gift from the Sea

Gift from the Sea (1955)

Time , Sea

“Leave off losings, and take on winnings, Erase all mortal ends, give birth to only new beginnings,
In a billion years of morning and a billion years of sleep.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Christ, Old Student in a New School (1972)

Birth , Sleep

“The one impulse in man which cannot be erased is his impulse toward freedom, his impulse toward sanity, toward higher levels of attainment in all of his endeavors.”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

Dianetics 55! (1954).

Freedom

“Just as the number one never can be reduced to zero, once we act or speak, our action or speech is never completely erased. An old oriental saying tells us, "sow good, and the harvest will be good. Sow evil and reap evil". We must understand that everything we do comes back to ourselves. Therefore before wishing for our own happiness and welfare and that of our children, we must do good in secret. To do good in secret means to act without seeking attention and praise, to act without any hope of reward. This is called "intoku."”

Koichi Tohei (1920–2011) Japanese aikidoka

Among the various ways of performing intoku, to walk the way of the universe and to lead others along this way is best.
20. Intoku - good done in secret
Ki Sayings (2003)

Children , Secret , Hope , Way