A Quote by Isaac Bashevis Singer

Literature is the memory of humanity.

Isaac Bashevis Singer

Quote Topics

Humanity Literature Memory

Quote Author

Isaac Bashevis Singer
American - Writer
November 21, 1902 - July 24, 1991

Literature is memory written down. All literature is memory.

Wayne Grady

Literature is humanity's broad-minded alter-ego, with room in its heart for monsters, even for you. It's humanity without the judgement.

Glen Duncan

Memory is the crux of our humanity. Without memory we have no identities. That is really why I am committing an autobiography.

Erica Jong

The moral backbone of literature is about that whole question of memory. To my mind it seems clear that those who have no memory have the much greater chance to lead happy lives.

W. G. Sebald

You have to be reminded of a basic fact: intelligence belongs to the watching consciousness; memory belongs to the mind. Memory is one thing - memory is not intelligence. But the whole of humanity has been deceived for centuries and told indirectly that the memory is intelligence. Your schools, your colleges, your universities are not trying to find your intelligence; they are trying to find out who is capable of memorizing more. And now we know perfectly well that memory is a mechanical thing. A computer can have memory, but a computer cannot have intelligence.

Rajneesh

Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience... from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

We are human, and nothing is more interesting to us than humanity. The appeal of literature is that it is so thoroughly a human thing — by, for and about human beings. If you lose that focus, you obviate the source of the power and permanence of literature.

M. H. Abrams

Above literature?' said the Queen. 'Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.

Alan Bennett

Literature is for the sake of humanity.

Cynthia Ozick

Literature is humanity talking to itself.

Norman Rush

South African literature is a literature in bondage. It is a less-than-fully-human literature. It is exactly the kind of literature you would expect people to write from prison.