Isn't it fortunate how selective our recollections usually are.
Interpretation
Our memories tend to focus on positive or convenient experiences while overlooking the negative ones.
Malcolm Forbes highlights the inherent selectivity of human memory, suggesting that we often choose to remember events in a way that favors our emotions or perspectives. This selective recollection can provide comfort and a sense of fortune but can also distort reality, leading us to overlook important lessons from negative experiences.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the reliability of memory in a psychology class.
Over the years, I've evolved a somewhat heretical but time-and mind-saving approach to books, articles, editorials that deal with weighty matters. More often than not, by beginning at the end and contemplating the conclusions, one can determine if it's worth going through the whole to get there.
Those who enjoy responsibility usually get it; those who merely like exercising authority usually lose it.
To live long and achieve happiness, cultivate the art of radiating happiness.
The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
If you never budge, don't expect a push.
It's never a good deal when only one party thinks it is.
The game of golf would lose a great deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green.
One thing I've learned is this: Never allow yourself to hate a people because of the actions of a few. Hatred and bigotry destroyed my nation, and millions died. I would hope that most people did not hate Germans because of the Nazis, or Americans because of slaves. Never hate, it only eats you alive. Keep an open mind and always look for the good in people. You may be surprised at what you find.
At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess.
And perhaps it was also the case that, for all a lifetime's internal struggling, you were finally no more than what others saw you as. That was your nature, whether you liked it or not.
No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.
The success or failure of any historical age is the extent to which those living at that time have fulfilled the special role that history has imposed upon them.
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