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
We strain to listen to the ghosts and echoes of our inexpressibly wise past, and we have an obligation to maintain these… — Ken Burns Copy Share Image
We're having a hard time understanding where jazz is going. What happened to jazz? — Ken Burns Copy Share Image
“From "Not For Ourselves Alone:" In Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s time: Women were barred by custom from the pulpit and professions Those who… — ken burns Copy Share Image
Nothing in our daily life offers more of the comfort of continuity, the generational connection of belonging to a vast and complicated… — Ken Burns Copy Share Image
Like a layer on a pearl, you can't specifically identify the irritant, the moment of the irritant, but at the end of… — Ken Burns Copy Share Image
I began to feel that the drama of the truth that is in the moment and in the past is richer and… — Ken Burns Copy Share Image
You need, as a historian, essential triangulation from your subject and the only way you get that triangulation is through time. — Ken Burns Copy Share Image
It is the great arrogance of the present to forget the intelligence of the past — 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
