Allen Weinstein Quotes

I play a curator, the most American part you can think of. My work is to protect the Declaration of Independence. I work at the National Archives in Washington.

Not only the Archivist alone but all who work for NARA are designated custodians of America's national memory.

The great thing about America is that people take its history and mythologise it.

American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.

Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it.

In a certain way, novelists become unacknowledged historians, because we talk about small, tiny, little anonymous moments that won't necessarily make it into the history books.

I do think the past changes at a slower rate. It sits a little more still for its portrait.

I'm resigned to the fact that the corseted history of America is not as exciting as that of Britain.

The White House is the people's house. When you do historical restoration, that must be what it is.

Every age sort of has its own history. History is really the stories that we retell to ourselves to make them relevant to every age. So we put our own values and our own spin on it.

It states, History should be regarded as a means for understanding the past and solving the challenges of the future. It also suggests that this celebration of the end of slavery is an important and enriching part of the history and heritage of the United States.

With each new book, the march of our national history takes a step forward. When one is present at a book launch, one is bearing witness to the birth of a new body of ideas, to the coming into being of another testimony of history.

No heirloom of humankind captures the past as do art and language.

History is a facsimile of events held together by finally biographical information.

A nation that forgets its past can function no better than an individual with amnesia.

There is no nation in the world greater, older or more honorable than the Turkish nation, nor has one been seen in the history of humanity.

The history of this country is told by showing people who have contributed to it.

The literary data that we have historically is indeed mostly about leaders or important people.

A people without a history is like the wind over buffalo grass.

When you go back and look at the history of anything, it’s always the records of the elite that survive.

The Greeks have given to the world the science of history; the Israelites gave to the world historical religion. In contrast to all their neighbors, both peoples knew what history is; this is no consequence of their mental giftedness, however, for there is another reason. Through mighty events both peoples experienced what history is, and by the investment of their lives they made history.

There is no reason why the American public should not be able to share what I regard as a very moving ceremony of unique historical importance.

… history is that which transforms documents into monuments

History, it is easily perceived, is a picture-gallery containing a host of copies and very few originals

History is what we would make of it.