Standards are always out of date. That's what makes them standards.
Alan BennettRead
Why do we not care to acknowledge them? The cattle, the body count. We still don't like to admit the war was even partly our fault because so many of our people died. A photograph on every mantlepiece. And all this mourning has veiled the truth. It's not so much lest we forget, as lest we remember. Because you should realise the Cenotaph and the Last Post and all that stuff is concerned, there's no better way of forgetting something than by commemorating it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the way we commemorate past tragedies while also forgetting the underlying truths about them.
In this quote, Alan Bennett critiques the collective tendency to remember the fallen in war through commemoration yet simultaneously choose to overlook the complexities and responsibilities surrounding those events. He suggests that while memorials like the Cenotaph and rituals such as the Last Post are designed to honor the dead, they can also serve to obscure the deeper truths and failings of society, thus allowing people to forget rather than properly confront the realities of war and its consequences.
Themes
WarMemoryCommemorationTruthLoss
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech honoring veterans, this quote can be used to highlight the complexity of remembering those who served.
More from Alan Bennett
All quotes →To begin with, it's true, she read with trepidation and some unease. The sheer endlessness of books outfaced her and she had no idea how to go on; there was no system to her reading, with one book leading to another, and often she had two or three on the go at the same time.
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A book is a device to ignite the imagination.
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Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories, knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remembering someone else.
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To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less...selfish.
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The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours
Alan BennettRead
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