Memory is often less about the truth than about what we want it to be.
Interpretation
Memory is shaped by our desires and perceptions rather than objective truth.
This quote highlights the subjective nature of memory, suggesting that what we recall is often influenced more by our wishes and interpretations than by actual events. It emphasizes that our memories are not merely records of truth, but rather constructions of what we wish to remember, potentially leading to skewed perceptions of reality.
In practice
In a speech discussing how our past experiences shape our identity.
Fear was the terrible secret of the battlefield and could afflict the brave as well as the timid. Worse it was contagious, and could destroy a unit before a battle even began. Because of that, commanders were first and foremost in the fear suppression business.
If youre a reporter, the easiest thing in the world is to get a story. The hardest thing is to verify. The old sins were about getting something wrong, that was a cardinal sin. The new sin is to be boring.
Being a professional means doing your job on the days you don't want to do it
With the marketing pressures driving the book world today, it's much easier to get the author of a memoir on a television show than a serious novelist.
If there is anything that is important to America, it is that you are not a prisoner of the past.
Bart Giamatti did not grow up (as he had dreamed) to play second base for the Red Sox. He became a professor at Yale, and then, in time president of the National Baseball League. He never lost his love for the Boston Red Sox. It was as a Red Sox fan, he later realized that human beings are fallen, and that life is filled with disappointment. The path to comprehending Calvinism in modern America, he decided, begins at Fenway Park.
In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist.
I am still so naïve; I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please, don’t ask me who I am. A passionate, fragmentary girl, maybe?
People with handicaps teach me that being is more important than doing, the heart is more important than the mind, and caring together is better than caring alone.
And if you take one from three hundred and sixty-five what remains?" "Three hundred and sixty-four, of course." Humpty Dumpty looked doubtful, "I'd rather see that done on paper," he said.
Criminals are never very amusing. It's because they're failures. Those who make real money aren't counted as criminals. This is a class distinction, not an ethical problem.
I cannot define for you what God is. I can only say that my work has proved empirically that the pattern of God exists in every man and that this pattern has at its disposal the greatest of all his energies for transformation and transfiguration of his natural being. Not only the meaning of his life but his renewal and his institutions depend on his conscious relationship with this pattern of his collective unconscious.
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