"He inferred that persons desiring to train this faculty (of memory) must select places and form mental images of the things they wish to remember and store those images in the places, so that the order of the places will preserve the order of the things, and the images of the things will denote the things themselves, and we shall employ the places and the images respectively as a wax writing-tablet and the letters written upon it."

"Memory is the thing you forget with."

"The ability to recall information about the past is thought to emerge in the 2nd half of the 1st year of life. Although there is evidence from both cognitive neuroscience and behavioral psychology to support this hypothesis, there is little longitudinal evidence with which the question can be addressed. Infants' memory abilities were tested between the ages of 9 and 16 months using elicited and deferred imitation. Infants' memory for events was tested after delays ranging from 1 to 6 months. The results suggest that at 9 months of age, infants are able to store and retrieve representations over delays of as many as 4 weeks but not over long delays. In contrast, 10-month-olds have at their disposal a system that allows encoding and retrieval of event representations over delays of up to 6 months. These results support the idea that the system that underlies long-term ordered recall emerges near the end of the 1st year of life."

"Though sands be black and bitter black the sea, Night lie before me and behind me night, And God within far Heaven refuse to light The consolation of the dawn for me,— Between the shadowy burns of Heaven and Hell, It is enough love leaves my soul to dwell &emsp;With memory."

"To live in hearts we leave behind Is not to die."

"A happy childhood can't be cured. Mine'll hang around my neck like a rainbow, that's all, instead of a noose."

"The affective intensity of an event is another predictor of later recall: Events that are "affectively charged," or have high levels of emotionality associated with them, either positive or negative, tend to be well recalled (e.g., Brewer, 1988; Thompson, 1998; Wagenaar, 1986; White, 2002)."

"One of the more consistent predictors of later recall of events is their uniqueness or distinctiveness. Specifically, events that are unique tend to be better remembered, relative to single episodes of events that occur more frequently (e.g., Brewer, 1988; Wagenaar, 1986). For example, in White's (1982, 1989, 2002) examinations of how own memories from the year 1979, the uniqueness of an event t the time it was experienced was strongly related to how well it was remembered: The less unique the event, the worse was White's recall of it. This pattern may be accounted for by interference schematization, or both. Interference from other, similar experiences makes it more difficult to retrieve the features of any specific experience. Similarly, schematization occurs as the features that are common across experiences are abstracted and the representation condensed to include only the common elements. The result is that, "...repeated encounters of similar kinds blend and the details of any single event may be forgotten..." (Barclay DeCooke, 1988, p. 106)."

"Indeed for James, "Memory requires more than the mere dating of a fact in the past. It must be dated in my past...I must think that I directly experienced its occurrence (p. 612)."

"Another feature of autobiographical memories is that they entail a sense of conscious awareness that one is reexperiencing an event that happened at some point in the past (Rubin, 1998; Tulving, 1985a, 1985b, 1993; Wheeler, 2000)."

"A baby is expected. A trip is expected. News is expected. Forgetfulness is expected. An invitation is expected. Hope is expected. But memories are not expected. They just come."

"Anyone who’s taken statements from multiple witnesses to the same event will know how malleable memory is."

"Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains; another, a moonlit beach; a third, a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years. Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth."

"Reg, as he insisted on being called, had a memory that he himself had once compared to the Queen Alexandra Birdwing Butterfly in that it was colorful, flitted prettily hither and thither, and was now, alas, almost completely extinct."

"Everyday experience suggests that highly emotional events are often the most memorable, an observation supported by psychological and pharmacological studies in humans. Although studies in animals have shown that nondeclarative emotional memory (behaviors associated with emotional situations) may be impaired by lesions of the amygdala, little is known about the neural underpinnings of emotional memory in humans, especially in regard to declarative memory (memory for facts that can be assessed verbally). We investigated the declarative memory of two rare patients with selective bilateral amygdala damage. Both subjects showed impairments in long-term declarative memory for emotionally arousing material. The data support the hypothesis that the human amygdala normally enhances acquisition of declarative knowledge regarding emotionally arousing stimuli."

"Remembrance is neither what happened nor what did not happen but, rather, their potentialization, their becoming possible once again."

"Memory is fiction. We select the brightest and the darkest, ignoring what we are ashamed of, and so embroider the broad tapestry of our lives."

"As my memory rests, but never forgets what I lost."

"This may be why we appear to learn absolutely nothing from experience, or may, in other words, account for our incoherence: memory does not require that we reconstitute the event, but that we justify it."

"Look at it out here! It's all falling apart. I'm erasing you, and I'm happy! You did it to me first. I can't believe you did this to me. Clem! Did you hear me? By morning, you'll be gone! The perfect ending to this piece of sh*t story!"

"Developmental changes in imitation were examined in three experiments with 6- to 24-month-old infants. In all experiments, infants in the demonstration condition observed an experimenter perform three specific actions with a puppet. Their ability to reproduce those actions was assessed for the first time during the test in the absence of prior practice. Infants in the control condition received equivalent exposure to the puppet and the experimenter but were not shown the target actions. The results of Experiment 1 showed that 12-, 18-, and 24-month-old infants exhibited clear evidence of imitation following a 24-hour delay (deferred imitation). In addition, the findings of Experiment 1 demonstrated that the 18- and 24-month-old infants reproduced more of the target actions during the test than the 12-month-olds. The results of Experiment 2 showed that 6-month-olds performed as well as 12-month-olds when they were tested in the absence of a delay (immediate imitation). Finally, the results of Experiment 3 showed that, with additional exposure to the target actions, even 6-month-old infants exhibited deferred imitation following a 24-hour delay. Taken together, these findings have important implications for current theories of the development of imitation and memory during the first 2 years of life."

"For more than a century, scientific investigators and clinicians have noted the potential for memory distortions associated with hypnosis. Moll, a noted nineteenth-century authority, commented that "Retroactive hallucinations are of great importance in law. They can be used to falsify testimony. People can be made to believe that they have witnessed certain scenes, or even crimes." (Moll 1889/1958, pp. 345-346). The pioneer hypnosis practitioner, Bernheim, observed, "I have shown how a false memory can cause false testimony given in good faith, and how examining magistrates can unwittingly cause false testimony by suggestion" (Bernheim, 1891/1980, p. 92). Similar findings have been observed by later legal commentators, as will be noted in the following discussion."

"God gave us memories that we might have roses in December."

"Historically, infants and very young children were thought incapable of explicit memory. As a result of changes in theoretical perspective and methodological developments, this assumption was challenged in the latter part of the 20th century. Substantial progress was made in describing age-related changes in explicit memory in the first two years of life. These developments permitted the first steps toward construction of a neuro-developmental account of the changes. By considering the timing and course of development of the neural substrate responsible for explicit memory we are able to bring greater specificity to the question “what develops?” Thus far, behavioral and electrophysiological methods (event-related potentials: ERPs) have revealed both individual and age-related variability in encoding and in consolidation and storage processes; the variability is systematically related to variability in long-term explicit memory. Suggestions are made for additional research to further our understanding of relations between brain and behavioral development in the first years of life."

"Coincident with developments in the temporal-cortical explicit memory network, long-term recall abilities are newly emergent late in the first year of human life. We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) in 9-month-olds as an index of the integrity of the neural substrate underlying a task thought to reflect explicit memory, namely, deferred imitation. ERP measures of recognition memory 1 week after unique laboratory experiences predicted whether and how much infants recalled of the experiences 1 month later. The findings further imply that memory storage and consolidation processes are a major source of variability in long-term recall memory late in the first year of life."

"Memories weigh something. They drag you down."

"The precise nature of the engram, the physical substrate of memory, remains uncertain. Here, it is reported that RNA extracted from the central nervous system of Aplysia given long-term sensitization training induced sensitization when injected into untrained animals; furthermore, the RNA-induced sensitization, like training-induced sensitization, required DNA methylation. In cellular experiments, treatment with RNA extracted from trained animals was found to increase excitability in sensory neurons, but not in motor neurons, dissociated from naïve animals. Thus, the behavioral, and a subset of the cellular, modifications characteristic of a form of nonassociative long-term memory in Aplysia can be transferred by RNA. These results indicate that RNA is sufficient to generate an engram for long-term sensitization in Aplysia and are consistent with the hypothesis that RNA-induced epigenetic changes underlie memory storage in Aplysia."

"Memories are like flagstones, time and distance work upon them like drops of acid."

"It's good to have a short memory because it keeps life fresh."

"After Gutenberg, realms of everyday life once ruled and served by Memory would be governed by the printed page. ...A man could now refer to the rules of grammar, the speeches of Cicero, and texts of theology, , and morality without storing them in himself. The printed book... [was] superior in countless ways to the internal invisible warehouse in each person. ...When they were equipped with indexes, as ...sometimes ...by the sixteenth century, then the only essential feat of Memory was to remember the order of the alphabet. Before the end of the eighteenth century the... index... had become standard. The technology of Memory retrieval... played a much smaller role in the higher realms of... knowledge. Spectacular feats of Memory became mere stunts."

"God gives us dreadful gifts. The most dreadful of all is memory."

"Fantasy, or Imagination, are the names given to the faculty of reproducing copies of originals once felt. The imagination is called 'reproductive' when the copies are literal; productive' when elements from different originals are recombined so as to make new wholes."

"When I had my imaginary friend I would look out of the small glass panes of the window and fill them with steam. Then, I would draw a little window and go out through it. Opposite our house, there was a milk store that was named Pinzon, and I would travel from the little window through the “o” in Pinzon, and from there into the center of the earth, where I had my friend, and we would dance and play... I do not remember my friend’s house, and she had no name. She was like me in age. She had no face. The truth is, I do not remember if she had a face or not, and she was very lively. I could not describe her. (9 September 1950)"

"Dreaming is not merely an act of communication; it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that is a value in itself."

"By the imagination, by its flattering brush, the cold skeleton of reason takes on living and ruddy flesh, by the imagination the sciences flourish, the arts are adorned, the wood speaks, the echoes sigh, the rocks weep, marble breathes, and all inanimate objects gain life. It is imagination again which adds the piquant charm of voluptuousness to the tenderness of an amorous heart; which makes tenderness bud in the study of the philosopher and of the dusty pedant, which, in a word, creates scholars as well as orators and poets."

"[H]e who has the most imagination should be regarded as having the most intelligence or genius, for all these words are synonymous; and again, only by a shameful abuse [of terms] do we think that we are saying different things, when we are merely using different words, different sounds, to which no idea or real distinction is attached."

"The old proverb, applied to fire and water, may, with equal truth, be applied to the imagination—it is a good servant, but a bad master."

"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did."

"If you cannot or will not imagine the results of your actions, there's no way you can act morally or responsibly. Little kids can't do it; babies are morally monsters—completely greedy. Their imagination has to be trained into foresight and empathy."

"I believe that one of the most deeply human, and humane, of [the faculties of a mature human that exist in the child] is the power of imagination: so that it is our pleasant duty ... to encourage that faculty of imagination in our children, to encourage it to grow freely, to flourish like the green bay tree, by giving it the best, absolutely the best and purest, nourishment that it can absorb. And never under any circumstances, to squelch it, or sneer at it, or imply that it is childish, or unmanly, or untrue."

"Imagine there's no heaven, It's easy if you try, No hell below us, Above us only sky, Imagine all the people living for today..."

"Imagine there's no countries, It isnt hard to do, Nothing to kill or die for, No religion too, Imagine all the people living life in peace...You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one, I hope some day you'll join us, And the world will be as one."

"For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. Imagination, producing new metaphors or revivifying old, is not the cause of truth, but its condition."

"Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but particularity is indispensable to the creations of the imagination."

"His imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich. It enabled him to run, though not to soar."

"The mental operation by which one achieves new concepts and which one denotes generally by the inadequate name of induction is not a simple but rather a very complicated process. Above all, it is not a logical process although such processes can be inserted as intermediary and auxiliary links. The principle effort that leads to the discovery of new knowledge is due to abstraction and imagination."

"There is an inverse relationship between imagination and money."

"How infinitely superior to our physical senses are those of the mind! The spiritual eye sees not only rivers of water but of air. It sees the crystals of the rock in rapid sympathetic motion, giving enthusiastic obedience to the sun's rays, then sinking back to rest in the night. The whole world is in motion to the center. So also sounds. We hear only woodpeckers and squirrels and the rush of turbulent streams. But imagination gives us the sweet music of tiniest insect wings, enables us to hear, all around the world, the vibration of every needle, the waving of every bole and branch, the sound of stars in circulation like particles in the blood. The Sierra canyons are full of avalanche debris - we hear them boom again, and we read the past sounds from present conditions. Again we hear the earthquake rock-falls. Imagination is usually regarded as a synonym for the unreal. Yet is true imagination healthful and real, no more likely to mislead than the coarse senses. Indeed, the power of imagination makes us infinite."

"Cartman: What the hell do you think you're doing declaring leprechauns aren't real?! General: What? Cartman: You just can't declare that imaginary things aren't real! Who are you to say what's real?! Think about it: is blue real? Is love really real? Lab Tech: Imaginary things are things made up by people, like Santa and Rudolph Tom: Yeah, and they detract from real things, like Jesus. Tech 1: Maybe Jesus is imaginary too. Tom: Ooooh, you'd better not say that! You'll go to hell! Tech 7: It's possible that hell is also imaginary."

"Kyle: It's all real. Think about it. Haven't Luke Skywalker and Santa Claus affected your lives more than most real people in this room? I mean, whether Jesus is real or not, he...he's had a bigger impact on the world than any of us have. And the same could be said of Bugs Bunny and Superman and Harry Potter. They've changed my life, changed the way I act on the Earth. Doesn't that make them kind of "real." They might be imaginary, but they're more important than most of us here. And they're all gonna be around long after we're dead. So in a way, those things are more realer than any of us."