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History Quote by Ken Burns

“I subscribe to William Faulkner's' view that history is not just about what we were before but who we are now.” quote by Ken Burns — Download Open image

“I subscribe to William Faulkner's' view that history is not just about what we were before but who we are now.”

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History William Faulkner

More by Ken Burns

Good history is a question of survival. Without any past, we will deprive ourselves of the defining impression of our being.

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Write: write letters. Keep journals. Besides your children, there is no surer way of achieving immortality.

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By its very nature, no one person can ever be the center of Jazz.

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The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It's our great contribution to the arts.

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The reason why you do history, and particularly why you do war, is that you want to make sure that in the next war, some lessons were learned. There's a saying: "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Or Ecclesiastes: "What has been will be again. What has been done will be done again." Human nature always superimposes itself…

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?

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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.…

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Louis Armstrong is quite simply the most important person in American music. He is to 20th century music (I did not say jazz) what…

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People tend to forget that the word "history" contains the word "story".

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History isn't really about the past - settling old scores. It's about defining the present and who we are.

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We strain to listen to the ghosts and echoes of our inexpressibly wise past, and we have an obligation to maintain these places, to…

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It follows the seasons, beginning each year with the fond expectancy of springtime and ending with the hard facts of autumn.

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Explore all 69 Ken Burns quotes

More History quotes

Histories never conclude; they just pause their prose. Their stories are, if they are truthful, untidy affairs, resistant to windings-up and sortings-out. They beat…

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It is said that history turns on small hinges. A human career, too, results from an accumulating series of decisions about large and small…

Norman Vincent Peale

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The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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In the entire history of the universe, let alone in your own history, there has never been another day just like today, and there will never be another just like it again. Today is the point to which all your yesterdays have been leading since the hour of your birth. It is the point from which all your tomorrows will…

Frederick Buechner

The NBA is my history.

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History has often showed us the strength of the forces that are unleashed by the yearning for freedom. It moved people to overcome their fears and openly confront dictators such as in East Germany and Eastern Europe about 22 years ago... The yearning for freedom cannot be contained by walls for long. It was this yearning that brought down the…

We find few historians who have been diligent enough in their search for truth; it is their common method to take on trust what…

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What is history after all? History is facts which become lies in the end.

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Things live and die, and then someone processes them into edible portions. This is a complete telling of the story, 'Food.' The basic plot…

David Fahrenthold

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History is a certain way, but you just change the point of view a little bit, and you discover a whole new side of…

Allison Schroeder

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We're at a point in history were we have to become a part of the neighborhood of inhabited planets, like a neighborhood of a community, which we have not even acknowledged that that community exists up until this point.

Today is a reality, tomorrow's a promise, and yesterday's history!

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