Ken Burns Quotes

54 quotes in 785 categories

• 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. Cynicism…
• History is malleable. A new cache of diaries can shed new light, and archeological evidence can challenge our popular assumptions.
• Good history is a question of survival. Without any past, we will deprive ourselves of the defining impression of our being.
• The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It's our great contribution to the arts.
• We're having a hard time understanding where jazz is going. What happened to jazz?
• I treat the photograph as a work of great complexity in which you can find drama. Add to that a careful composition of landscapes, live…
• I think we continually need to understand how important an event the war was - how defining, how central to who we are. Everything that…
• I never, ever want to apologize for a film. If it's bad I'll say it's my fault. And that's what I can say so far…
• A jazz beat is a dynamic changing rhythm.
• History's just been made for sale to an inside deal.
• I am passionately interested in understanding how my country works. And if you want to know about this thing called the United States of America…
• I began to feel that the drama of the truth that is in the moment and in the past is richer and more interesting than…
• I don't use composers. I research music the way I research the photographs or the facts in my scripts.
• I grew up certain for a while that I was going to be an anthropologist, until film turned my head.
• 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…
• We all think that an exception is going to be made in our case and were going to live forever. Being a human is actually…
• I think the problem with a lot of the fusion music is that its extremely predictable, its a rock rhythm and the solos all play…
• One of the things I really like about Ford's films is how there is always a focus on the way characters live, and not just…
• People tend to forget that the word "history" contains the word "story".
• Like a layer on a pearl, you can't specifically identify the irritant, the moment of the irritant, but at the end of the day, you…

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