The central theme of this article is the performance of Professor Eurípedes Simões de Paula seen through his texts and the documents archived at the Centro de Documentação Histórica da Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas at the Universidade de São Paulo. Professor Eurípedes was responsible for setting up a humanist driven project which saw the Universidade de São Paulo as a centre engaged in building up people who would be responsible for the creation and management of critique regarding Brazilian socio-political life. Eurípedes' political commitment, both in the national and international sphere, could be seen through his career as a professor as well as a researcher, publishing articles, organising centres of study as well as teaching his students how to 'live the knowledge'. This article, filled with several quotations from professor Eurípedes himself, understands memory as a construction marked by time, by memories themselves and things that are forgotten, all processed in an individual as well as a social sphere.