Mind and Memory: 4 Quotes and 5 Visual Metaphors
“It isn’t so astonishing, the number of things I can remember, as the number of things I can remember that aren’t so.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910)
“Do you ever get that strange feeling of vujà dé? Not déjà vu; vujà dé. It’s the distinct sense that, somehow, something just happened that has never happened before. Nothing seems familiar. And then suddenly the feeling is gone. Vujà dé.”
George Carlin (1937–2008), in Funny Times, December 2001
“Memory isn’t like reading a book; it’s more like writing a book from fragmentary notes.”
Psychologist John F. Kihlstrom (1994)
“The real purpose of the scientific method is to make sure Nature hasn’t misled you into thinking you know something you don’t actually know.”
Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, 1974
“Our memories are flexible and superimposable, a panoramic blackboard with an endless supply of chalk and erasers.”
Elizabeth Loftus and Katherine Ketcham, The Myth of Repressed Memory, 1994
