Memory is so corrupt that you remember only what you want to; if you want to forget about something, slowly but surely you do.
Interpretation
Memory can be selective, allowing us to remember what we choose and forget what we desire.
This quote by Stefan Zweig highlights the subjective nature of memory, suggesting that our thoughts and recollections are often influenced by our desires and intentions. It implies that we have the power to curate our memories, consciously choosing to focus on certain experiences while letting go of others, which can be both a blessing and a curse in navigating our past.
In practice
In a speech about the implications of trauma, one could quote Zweig to emphasize how individuals choose what to remember.
All my life I have been passionately interested in monomaniacs of any kind, people carried away by a single idea. The more one limits oneself, the closer one is to the infinite; these people, as unworldly as they seem, burrow like termites into their own particular material to construct, in miniature, a strange and utterly individual image of the world.
When they are preparing for war, those who rule by force speak most copiously about peace until they have completed the mobilization process.
Only ambition is fired by the coincidences of success and easy accomplishment but nothing is quite as splendidly uplifting to the heart as the defeat of a human being who battles against the invincible superiority of fate. This is always the most grandiose of all tragedies, one sometimes created by a dramatist but created thousands of times by life.
Now I am discovering the world once more. England has widened my horizon.
In history, the moments during which reason and reconciliation prevail are short and fleeting.
Only the person who has experienced light and darkness, war and peace, rise and fall, only that person has truly experienced life.
There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.
I am not sure how much good is done by moralising about fairy tales. This can be unsubtle - telling children that virtue will be rewarded, when in fact it is mostly simply the fact of being the central character that ensures a favourable outcome. Fairy tales are not, on the whole, parables.
People like comfort; that's natural. But as for making money simply for the sake of making it, and giving yourself far more trouble and anxiety to gain it than you can ever get pleasure from it when it's gained, why, as for me, I'd rather sit still and cross my arms.
Your duty is to be, and not to be this or that. I Am That I Am sums up the whole truth; the method is summarized in Be Still.
Every one knows that the exercise of military power is forever dangerous to civil rights; and we have had recent instances of violences that have been offer'd to private subjects.
A true libertarian supports free enterprise, opposes big business; supports local self-government, opposes the nation-state; supports the National Rifle Association, opposes the Pentagon.
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