Quotations: "Who Said That?"
Can you match the following memorable quotation from celebrities, politicians, and historical figures with their authors? See how many you can guess. Answers are at the bottom of the page. Enjoy!
1. Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
2. We all know that books burn--yet we have the greater knowledge that books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory.
3. I urge you to pursue preserving your personal history to allow your children and grandchildren to know who you were as a child and what your hopes and dreams were.
4. History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
5. Anyone who's fortunate enough to live to be 50 years old should take some time to sit down and write the story of your life, even if it's only twenty pages, and even if it's only for your children and grandchildren.
6. The past actually happened but history is only what someone wrote down.
7. Never doubt that you can change history. You already have.
8. The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.
9. There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside the dullest exterior, there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.
10. One regret I have: I didn't get as much of the family history as I could have for the kids.
11. Knowing our past, we shall find strength and wisdom to meet the present.
12. All human beings have an innate need to hear and tell stories and to have a story to live by.
13. If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.
14. All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.
15. The best classroom in the world is at the feet of an elderly person.
16. Storytelling is fundamental to the human search for meaning. The past empowers the present, and the groping footsteps leading to this present mark the pathways to the future.
17. Life is not that which one lived, but that which one remembers, and how one remembers to tell it.
18. To look backward for a while is to refresh the eye, to restore it, and to render it the more fit for its prime function of looking forward.
19. To forget one's ancestors is to be a brook without a source, a tree without a root.
20. To be faithful to ourselves, we must keep our ancestors and posterity within reach and grasp of our thoughts and affections, living in the memory and retrospect of the past, and hoping with affection and care for those who are to come after us.
21. A time's true colors fade with the passing of those who moved through it. Thus one of the oldest uses of history, oral and written, is its memorial function, the capacity to keep long-gone times vivid, recovering for those present a little of the life that might otherwise be lost.
22. You can make yourself live forever through writing. Do not pass through life without leaving something behind for others to learn from your experiences-even if no one but your children read it. You may discover a you you've never known.
23. It's a pleasure to share one's memories. Everything remembered is dear, endearing, touching, precious. At least the past is safe.though we didn't know it at the time. We know it now. Because it's in the past; because we survived.
24. I spent considerable time interviewing my mother in preparation for writing Wish You Well, and it was an enlightening time for me. Most of us assume we know all there is to know about our parents. However, if you take the time to ask questions and actually listen to the answers, you may find there is still much to learn about people so close to you.
25. I've written four books, and I wasn't going to write anymore, except I'm at the end of my life now. Do you know what tipped the scales for me? The fact that it [my biography] would be such a good thing for my family, my children, and grandchildren. It would be like a family heirloom or a photograph album.
ANSWERS:
1. George Santayana (1863-1952)2. Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945)
3. Oprah Winfrey (born 1954)
4. Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
5. William Clinton (born 1946)
6. A. Whitney Brown (born 1952)
7. Marge Piercy (born 1936)
8. Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980)
9. Mark Twain (1835-1910)
10. Robert De Niro (born 1943)
11. Gertrude Weil (1879-1971)
12. Harvey Cox (born 1929)
13. Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
14. Isak Dinesen (1885-1962)
15. Andy Rooney, (born 1919)
16. Mary Catherine Bateson (born 1939)
17. Gabriel Garcia Marquez (born 1928)
18. Margaret Fairless Barber
19. Chinese proverb
20. Daniel Webster, US lawyer, diplomat & Secretary of State (1782-1852)
21. Tom Clark (born 1941), poet and critic, regarding James Koller's book Like It Was; San Francisco Chronicle, July 2000
22. Antwone Fisher, U.S. author and screenwriter (born 1959)
23. Susan Sontag, author and critic, in American Review, New York, September 1973 (1933-2004)
24. David Baldacci, author, attorney, and screenwriter; on his book, Wish You Well (born 1960)
25. Sir George Martin, British composer and producer for The Beatles (born 1926)