Focus Quote by Ken Burns

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

— Ken Burns

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

— Ken Burns

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

— Ken Burns

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

— Ken Burns

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

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

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

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

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

— Ken Burns

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

— Ken Burns

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

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

— Ken Burns