When a documentary filmmaker, working in the style that I do, suggests that there has been a shooting ratio of 40 hours to every one hour of finished film, that doesn't mean that the other 39 are bad. — Ken Burns Copy Share Image
The stories from 1975 on are not finished and there is no resolve. I could spend 50 hours on the last 25 years of jazz and still not do it justice. — Ken Burns Copy Share Image
Good history is a question of survival. Without any past, we will deprive ourselves of the defining impression of our being. — Ken Burns Copy Share Image
Write: write letters. Keep journals. Besides your children, there is no surer way of achieving immortality. — Ken Burns Copy Share Image
The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It's our great contribution to the arts. — Ken Burns Copy Share Image
The reason why you do history, and particularly why you do war, is that you want to make sure that in the next war,… — Ken Burns Copy Share Image
In a sense I've made the same film over and over again. In all of them I've asked, 'Who are we as Americans? — Ken Burns Copy Share Image
I think we too often make choices based on the safety of cynicism, and what we're lead to is a life not fully lived.… — Ken Burns Copy Share Image
Louis Armstrong is quite simply the most important person in American music. He is to 20th century music (I did not say jazz) what… — Ken Burns Copy Share Image
People tend to forget that the word "history" contains the word "story". — Ken Burns Copy Share Image
History isn't really about the past - settling old scores. It's about defining the present and who we are. — Ken Burns Copy Share Image
We strain to listen to the ghosts and echoes of our inexpressibly wise past, and we have an obligation to maintain these places, to… — Ken Burns Copy Share Image
It follows the seasons, beginning each year with the fond expectancy of springtime and ending with the hard facts of autumn. — Ken Burns Copy Share Image
