I have made a film about jazz that tries to look through jazz to see what it tells us about who we are as a people. I think that jazz is a spectacularly accurate model of democracy and a kind… — Ken Burns Copy Share Image
World War II is smothered in sentimentality and nostalgia. What's interesting about Vietnam is that sentimentality is just not there, so you're given kind of a clean access to it in one way. It's also a war that represents a… — 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
