Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0303: Reprise: How do I memorize quotes?

Episode Date: May 6, 2015

Today Timothy revisits the question on how to memorize quotes, with some extra comments on how he would change his answer today. What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, 2nd movement, performed by the US Army Band.

Today we're doing a reprise episode of episode 30 on memorizing quotes. There's really nothing I would modify about this particular episode, except that I would place some more emphasis on the value of having a toolbox of quotes that are numbered so that you can pull them up at any time. Maybe just maintain a hundred numbers in relation to your number pegs so that you can always think of an appropriate quote at any given time. And we talk about that in the conversation toolbox page at masterofmemory.com slash conversation.

Here's episode 30 as it was originally delivered. Welcome to Master of Memory. I'm Timothy, and I'm here to answer your accelerated learning questions every day and to inspire and empower you to learn anything you want to learn faster than ever. Kara asked a question on Facebook about memorizing quotes. I mentioned back in episode 12 that quotes are something that are really handy to have because you can just bring them up in a conversation without having to look them up, which not only makes you look intelligent, but it helps to inform the conversation and hopefully help keep your dialogue, you know,

edifying and wholesome. So like anything, there are two parts to memorizing quotes, and those are first learning them really well in the first place, and then maintaining them long term. Because my guess is that, Kara, you've probably memorized quotes in the past, but they don't always stay with you for a long time. And then there are, of course, quotes that are hard to memorize in the first place. So we'll address those two one at a time. We'll start with learning quotes in the first place. Now, if a quote is just a single sentence, probably less than 20 words, what you can do is you can quiz just on the key words of the quote, and you'll be able to remember the quote. For example,

you could use a Quizlet set with what the quote is about on one side, and then the key words on the other side. Now, what would be on one side would be what you want to trigger you to think of the quote. So if you wanted to come up with a quote in a conversation or some other context, you'd want to go, what is it that's going to make me think of this quote? So for me, I would have on one side of the card, I would have something like, what did Oscar Wilde say about truth? Or maybe just Oscar Wilde on truth. And then on the other side of it, instead of saying the truth is rarely pure and never simple, I would just put five words, truth, rarely pure, never simple. And it would be easy to remember the rest of it from that. So you use a Quizlet set.

And when it says, when it prompts you and says, what did Oscar Wilde say about truth? All you have to do is you can remember the truth is rarely pure and never simple. And so even though you're remembering the whole quote, all you have to do is type those five keywords which represent the whole quote. For longer quotes, you'll probably have to break them up somewhat and use keywords for different sections of the quote. Here's one of my favorite Oscar Wilde quotes, and it's kind of long. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated.

For these, there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Again, that's a pretty long quote, but the way that I would memorize it and the way that I have memorized it is I break it down into four main parts, and for each part I only use five keywords around which I can simply remember the rest of it. So the first part is the first thing that he says. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. The only words you really need are ugly, beautiful, corrupt, charming, and fault. Because if you're familiar with the quote, those will be a prompt to remind you of the rest of the quote. Similarly, the second part can be

reduced to beautiful, beautiful, cultivated, hope. And then the third part is elect beautiful beauty. And the fourth part where he talks about books is about eight words, but it's fairly simple. No moral, immoral book. Well, badly. That all. The reason for reducing it to keywords like this, again, is just so that you have less to type. You don't have to type out every single word. If you get the keywords right, you have the quote right. You can test yourself on the whole quote

once in a while just by, you know, looking at the text somewhere. Now, to remember these four parts of the quote in order, I would use a memory palace. For those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things, if your first location in your memory palace is your bedroom, then you could imagine somebody who's beautiful has just been sleeping and does not look that beautiful at the moment. If the second part of your memory palace is your bathroom, you could imagine that person looking in the mirror at her face and finding beautiful meanings in beautiful things by looking at her beautiful face or something like that. You want the locations in your memory palace to be a trigger to remember

the quote itself and the meaning of the quote. Now to remember this quote long term, you'll have to come up with a retention schedule and keep quizzing in Quizlet as time goes by. I mean, you could just quiz, you know, you could learn it and then quiz the next day and then quiz every week or every month or something like that. But I recommend coming up with a retention schedule, which you can learn from masterofmemory.com slash retention so that you remember all of these quotes in the long term as long as you want. It just requires you to review again and then review again a while later and then review again after a much longer time. All right, I hope you've enjoyed this reprise episode.

For anyone who has any questions about learning or memorizing anything faster than ever, feel free still to leave a message at masterofmemory.com slash question and I'll be able to respond quickly to your message from wherever I am. I just won't be able to record an episode on that topic until I'm back in the States in May. Meanwhile, if you want to support the show, please check out our Spanish course at masterofmemory.com slash Spanish. Or if you want to follow my adventures in Argentina or wherever else I might happen to be, you can do that at timothymososer.com