Quotes on History And Memory

Sixty years after the end of the war, the time has come to make this information available. With the number of survivors and witnesses diminishing by the day, and the reality that the Holocaust is fading into the pages of history and memory, we should not have to wait any longer.

History and memory share events; that is, they share time and space. Every moment is two moments.

No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.

History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.

History never looks like history when you are living through it. It always looks confusing and messy, and it always feels uncomfortable.

In the theatre we reach out and touch the past through literature, history and memory so that we might receive and relive significant and relevant human qualities in the present and then pass them on to future generations.

History is a people's memory, and without a memory, man is demoted to the lower animals.

It seems to me, that this, too, is how memory works. What we remember of what was done to us shapes our view, molds us, sets our stance. But what we remember is past, it no longer exists, and yet we hold on to it, live by it, surrender so much control to it. What do we become when we put down the scripts written by history and memory, when each person before us can be seen free of the cultural or personal narrative we've inherited or devised? When we, ourselves, can taste that freedom.