We will never cease our critique of those persons who distort the past, rewrite it, falsify it, who exaggerate the importance of one event and fail to mention some other; such a critique is proper (it cannot fail to be), but it doesn't count for much unless a more basic critique precedes it: a critique of human memory as such. For after all, what can memory actually do, the poor thing? It is only capable of retaining a paltry little scrap of the past, and no one knows why just this scrap and not some other one, since in each of us the choice occurs mysteriously, outside our will or our interests. We won't understand a thing about human life if we persist in avoiding the most obvious fact: that a reality no longer is what it was when it was; it cannot be reconstructed. Even the most voluminous archives cannot help. . Milan Kundera
About This Quote

Camus made this statement in an article entitled, “The Myth of Sisyphus”. Camus was saying that our memory is not what it used to be. We can remember things better than we used to, but we can’t recreate the past. He says that memory is only capable of retaining a paltry little scrap of the past.

Camus believes that no matter how much we would like to know what has happened in the past, we will never be able to get anything but a fragment of memory. This is not always bad news. Camus believes that at times it is good news because when something terrible has happened in the past, then it is much easier to help others from their pain.

Source: Ignorance

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