Memorials Quotes

“Every November of my boyhood, we put on red poppies and attended highly patriotic services in remembrance of those who had 'given' their lives. But on what assurance did we know that these gifts had really been made? Only the survivors—the living—could attest to it. In order to know that a person had truly laid down his life for his friends, or comrades, one would have to hear it from his own lips, or at least have heard it promised in advance. And that presented another difficulty. Many brave and now dead soldiers had nonetheless been conscripts. The known martyrs—those who actually, voluntarily sought death and rejoiced in the fact—had been the kamikaze pilots, immolating themselves to propitiate a 'divine' emperor who looked (as Orwell once phrased it) like a monkey on a stick. Their Christian predecessors had endured torture and death (as well as inflicted it) in order to set up a theocracy. Their modern equivalents would be the suicide murderers, who mostly have the same aim in mind. About people who set out to lose their lives, then, there seems to hang an air of fanaticism: a gigantic sense of self-importance unattractively fused with a masochistic tendency to self-abnegation. Not wholesome.

The better and more realistic test would therefore seem to be: In what cause, or on what principle, would you risk your life?”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“If things went according to death notices, man would be absolutely perfect. There you find only first-class fathers, immaculate husbands, model children, unselfish and self-sacrificing mothers, grandparents mourned by all, businessmen in contrast with whom Francis of Assisi would seem an infinite egoist, generals dripping with kindness, humane prosecuting attorneys, almost holy munitions makers - in short, the earth seems to have been populated by a horde of wingless angels without one's having been aware of it.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, The Black Obelisk

“We internalize traits we observe in others as a way to honor and remember them. We are all living memorials.”
― Jomny Sun, Everyone's a Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too

“It is inevitable that I will leave a legacy simply because I cannot walk through life without leaving footprints as I walk. Therefore, I would be wise to consider the path before I make the prints.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“If there is any solace to be found in the carnage of September 11th, may I find it in understanding that the potential to do great good can handily rival the tendency to carry out great evil. And out of that understanding may I commit in my own life to make certain that in such a critical rivalry I will ensure that towers will never fall because of me, but people will be raised up due to me.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Baby, let me tell you what's going to happen. In a few years, there are going to be beautiful posters of Malcolm X, and his photographs will be everywhere. The same people who don't give a damn now will lie and say they always supported him.”
― Maya Angelou, A Song Flung Up to Heaven

“If the baser instinct of rampant self-preservation adamantly refuses to surrender itself to the infinitely greater call of self-sacrifice, in attempting to save our lives we will have in reality completely destroyed our lives.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“In a clear voice, Mrs. Ross said, "This may be where we mark Liam's time with us, but I don't want you to think this is where you have to come to think about Liam." She held the vase close to her chest. "Think about him always." Her mouth puckered. "Anywhere.”
― Jessica Knoll, Luckiest Girl Alive

“Someone, someday will ask who I was. And someone, someday will answer by saying, “Well, look at what he did”. And what I hope I ‘did’ was to leave behind a really good answer.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Are we leaving the kind of footprints in the kind of places that will cause people to remember the kind of person that we want to be remembered as? If not, maybe we should take a hard look at the shoes that we’re wearing and evaluate where we’re wearing them.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Remembering is not what's important. What's important is never forgetting the need to remember.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“I cannot stress this enough: do not take powerful hallucinogens before going to a Holocaust memorial.”
― Nathan Rabin, The Big Rewind: A Memoir Brought to You by Pop Culture

“If you don't recognize your own crimes, there's no impediment to continuing them. There's a pretty dramatic example of that right at this moment. This happens to be the fiftieth anniversary of John F. Kennedy's decision to launch the war against South Vietnam. Forgetting the fiftieth anniversary of the launching of one of the major atrocities in post-Second World War history is pretty severe. But almost nobody has noticed it. I don't think we'll hear a word about it. And, yes, that opens the way to further aggression.”
― Noam Chomsky, Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire

“To forget is to blithely toss aside the hard lessons that were hard won by others before us, thereby needlessly dooming us to endure the hard lessons that are likely to be forgotten by those who will follow us. And it is altogether reasonable that in order to avoid this repetitive trouncing, God graciously granted us memories.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“At ten o'clock we arrived in Aspinwall, or, as it is always called there, Colon, this being the real name of the place, given by the people in honor of Columbus; Aspinwall is the name given by the Americans, but is not used on the Isthmus”
― Helen Josephine Sanborn, A Winter in Central America and Mexico.

“A memorial is the touchstone that incessantly reminds us that in a world of decay, great things are not held only to history. For great things always arise in the midst of great decay, for that is what makes them great.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“I would have preferred raised stones as markers," she said simply, and he understood that she was confiding a deeply private thing to him. "I imagined something upright, tall, with chiseled angels rising from it. I wanted a curved elaborate script to spell their names, a poem or a prayer carved into marble. I wanted a building built. A mausoleum.: She sighed. "I wanted something as magnificent as grief.”
― Kathleen Cambor, In Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden

“Journalist Tony Horwitz describes its laser show as an unfortunate mix of Coca-Cola, the Beatles, the Atlanta Braves, and Elvis sining "Dixie," followed by the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." Television ads end with the inclusive slogan, "Stone Mountain: A Different Day for Everyone." Eventually the desire for everyone's dollar may accomplish what the physical elements cannot: eradicating Stone Mountain as a Confederate-KKK Shrine.”
― James Loewen

“Jefferson made no consistent effort to abolish slavery ... It would be nice if Jefferson were the photo-abolitionist that the memorial and the park service brochure pretend he was ... his memorial needs to be more complex than it is ... the National Park Service could supply the contexts missing from the juxtaposed questions on its panels. Then visitors could see Jefferson as a man who not only envisioned but also betrayed the hopes of mankind.”
― James Loewen

“Jefferson made no consistent effort to abolish slavery ... It would be nice if Jefferson were the proto-abolitionist that the memorial and the park service brochure pretend he was ... his memorial needs to be more complex than it is ... the National Park Service could supply the contexts missing from the juxtaposed questions on its panels. Then visitors could see Jefferson as a man who not only envisioned but also betrayed the hopes of mankind.”
― James Loewen

“Indeed, antebellum home sites go to extraordinary lengths to avoid mentioning slavery.”
― James Loewen

“How can we expect affluent white Southerners who control most plantation sites to tell the full and sometimes unsavory truth about their sites when the National Park Service does no better?”
― James W Loewen

“Or consider the relative power of the three branches of government ... some political scientists claim that a fourth branch - the CIA, National Security Council, and other covert agencies - has developed in the last thirty years. The Constitution cannot save democracy when officials in the FBI, CIA, State Department, and undercover agencies determine not only our policies but also how much the people, the Congress, and perhaps even the president need to know about them.”
― James W Loewen

“For that matter, even if the owners and workers in a historic site had not included a president, most visitors would want to hear about the important events in their lives, not just about their furniture.”
― James W. Loewen, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong

“Set within the sea of stones were little oval buildings, like beehives without openings. Marra knew at once that they were graves.”
― T. Kingfisher, Nettle & Bone

“Jedan od njegovih najzanimljivijih projekata bilo je procjenjivanje kojim tempom propadaju spomenici sa jakim nacionalističkim nabojem. U tu svrhu, vozikao se po Bosni, a spustio bi se i preko Ivan-sedla do doline Neretve. Njegova neumorna radoznalost tragala je za betonskim i granitnim nakaradma koje su se kao pacovi množile poslije rata. Postavljene po trgovima, bregovima i drugim istaknutim mjestima, bole su oči svojim ogavnim izgledom. Mnoge su nosile popis poginulih vojnika i civila iz tog kraja, kočepereći se vjerskim obilježjima i porukama iz religiozne literature. Neizmjerna ružnoća tih tvorevina upućivala je na duhovnu jalovost onih koji su ih platili i osmislili. Grdobe nisu pravljene prvenstveno iz pijeteta prema mrtvima. Njihov smisao je bio da održavaju mržnju na optimalnom nivou.”
― Nihad Hasanović, Vidimo se u X

“It's now known, the Forgotten feeds into Nidus's rivers and sea. And so too will Anemone's spirit. With these lanterns, we all become stars born of fire, swathed in earth, and carried by the wind. Let our light shine over her waters, now and forevermore known as the Anemone Sea.”
― A.J. Lexa, Lines Between Stars

“We have a collection of 800 jars of soil in our museum. We collect these soils from lynching sites. People who are involved in erecting markers collect the soil, put it in a jar that has the name of the victim, the date of the victim, and then they bring it back to the museum.

An older Black woman was digging soil at a site in west Alabama. She was afraid because it was on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. As she was about to dig, a big white man in a pickup truck drove by and stared at her. It made her anxious. Then he drove by again and stared some more. Then he parked his truck, got out, and walked toward her. She was terrified. Then the man asked, "What are you doing?" She was going to tell him that she was just getting dirt for her garden. Then she said, "Mr. Stevenson, something got ahold of me. I told that man, I'm digging soil here because this is where a Black man was lynched in 1937." She just looked down and started digging.

The man surprised her by asking, "Does that memo you have talk about the lynching?" She said, "It does." Then he asked, "Can I read it?" He started reading while she started digging. After he finished reading the memo, he said, "Would it be all right if I helped you?" She said, "Yes." The man got down on his knees, and she offered him the implement to dig the soil. He said, "No, no, no, no, no, you keep that. I'll just use my hands." She said he started picking up the soil and putting it in the jar, and throwing his hand into the soil. She said there was something about the conviction with which he was putting his whole body into this that moved her.

She went from fear to relief to joy so quickly she couldn't help it. Tears were running down her face. The man turned to her and he said, "Oh, ma'am, I'm so sorry I'm upsetting you." She said, "No, no, no. You're blessing me." They kept digging, and they were getting near to filling the jar. She looked over at the man, and she noticed that he had slowed down. His face had turned red. Then she saw that there was a tear running down his face. She reached over and put her hand on his shoulder. She said, "Are you all right?" That's when the man turned her, and he said, "No, ma'am." He said, "I'm just so worried that it might have been my grandfather who helped lynch this man."

She said they both sat on that roadside and wept. She said, I'm going to go back and put this jar of soil in the museum in Montgomery. Then the man said, "Ma'am, would it be all right if I just followed you back?" She said, "Sure." She called me on the way back. She said, "Mr. Stevenson, I want you to come to the museum and meet my new friend." I was there when these two people who met on a roadside in a place of pain and agony and violence and bigotry came in and together did something beautiful by putting that jar of soil in that exhibit.

I'm not naive. I don't believe that beautiful things like that always happen when we tell the truth. I do believe that we deny ourselves the beauty of justice when we refuse to tell the truth. I've seen too much beauty come out of truth-telling, too much restoration, too much redemption, to believe that truth-telling doesn't have a power that is greater than the fear and anger that is prompting these orders, prompting some of this retreat. I worry about people who are already surrendering and waving white flags, and running for cover. I just don't think that's the way we're going to get to the other side.”
― Bryan Stevenson

“The winds of history are certain to erase footprints left in the sands of time. Footprints left in the rock succumb to neither.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Lines, circles and curves corresponding to a cherished, remembered sound called over fields at summer dusk from a back porch door, shouted perhaps in anger or whispered in passion, or in prayer, in the winter dark. All that remained of torn faces, crushed bone, scattere bones.”
― Jane Urquhart, The Stone Carvers