World Alzheimer's Day, observed each year on 21 September, draws attention to Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia, conditions that affect memory, cognition and, ultimately, a person's sense of self. To mark the occasion, this week's phrases of the day turn to writers, philosophers and thinkers who have grappled with what memory means and what its loss would take from us.
Memory as the foundation of identity
Several of the quotations gathered here treat memory not as a passive record of events but as the very material from which a person's identity is built.
The Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, who explored memory extensively across his fiction, held that a life is defined less by what actually happened than by how it is remembered and retold. The Roman philosopher and statesman Cicero framed memory in institutional terms, calling it "the treasury and guardian of all things."
The Irish writer Oscar Wilde offered a more intimate image, describing memory as "the diary that we all carry about with us." The implication in all three is the same: without memory, there is no continuous self to speak of, only a sequence of disconnected moments.
Memory, forgetting and power
Not every phrase treats memory as simply comforting. The Czech-French novelist Milan Kundera, writing under the shadow of totalitarian erasure in Central Europe, argued that "the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." For Kundera, remembering was not a private, sentimental act but a political one, a form of resistance against those who would rewrite or erase the past.
A related warning comes from Elie Wiesel, the Romanian-born writer and Holocaust survivor, who insisted that "to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time." Both writers point to memory's role not just in personal identity but in collective and historical accountability, a theme that resonates with Alzheimer's disease's gradual erosion of exactly this capacity.
Memory as an unreliable narrator
Other voices in this week's selection are more sceptical, suggesting memory is neither fixed nor fully trustworthy. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche captured this tension sharply: "'I did that,' says my memory. 'I could not have done that,' says my pride." For Nietzsche, memory could be overruled by ego, exposing how selectively people recall their own past.
The American writer Joan Didion, known for her reflective essays on memory and selfhood, wrote in a similar vein that "I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be." Her observation suggests that even an intact memory does not guarantee a stable connection to one's former selves, a thought that takes on added weight in the context of a disease that dissolves that connection entirely.
Why the theme matters this week
Alzheimer's disease and related dementias affect memory in ways that touch not only the individual but families, carers and communities. By pairing World Alzheimer's Day with reflections from literature and philosophy, this week's phrases of the day aim to place a medical and social issue within a broader human context, one that has occupied great minds across centuries: what does it mean to be a person whose past has come loose from the present.
