Samuel Johnson Quotes

History depends always upon what, for one reason or another, has survived from earlier periods, particularly upon what was written down or pictured.

All history was at first oral.

Without archives many stories of real people would be lost, and along with those stories, vital clues that allow us to reflect and interpret our lives today.

The concept of preserving history, collating full archives, making them as usable as possible so the public have access to them, I really feel that it allows the public an ability to engage with their own history.

I have always had a great interest in visually documenting the past.

If there was a day that history was not recorded, then the history of one hundred days would be in peril.

Since human memory is short and does not suffice for a crowd of things, the authority of those who preceded our age, the divine emperors and kings, has decreed that those things were to be written down which the progress of fleeting time generally removes from the knowledge of men.

Before books, nothing got saved. We don’t know what the cavemen thought about caves even though they tried to write on the walls.

Sixty years after the end of the war, the time has come to make this information available. With the number of survivors and witnesses diminishing by the day, and the reality that the Holocaust is fading into the pages of history and memory, we should not have to wait any longer.

Historia (Inquiry); so that the actions of of people will not fade with time.

Out of monuments, names, words proverbs ...and the like, we do save and recover somewhat from the deluge of time.

I think history is collective memories. In writing, I'm using my own memory, and I'm using my collective memory.

My work is as an ethnographic rescuer: a conduit between past and future generations. The urgency of this effort cannot be overstated.

To record is a process against forgetting. I do interviews because it's what I've been doing every day for a few hours since I was a kid. I've always talked to artists.

Whole generations have forgotten history.

For a long time, I've been interested in cultural memory and historical erasure.

Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood.

Perhaps the most important lesson of the New Social Historians is that history belongs to those about whom or whose documents survive.

I'm a sponge for historical images of black people and black history on film.

Folklore used to be passed by word of mouth, from one generation to the next; that's what makes it folklore, as opposed to, say, history, which is written down and stored in an archive.

There is nothing new except what has been forgotten.

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

Writing preserves only the thought of literate peoples.

We have a national memory in this country of about 7 minutes.

That great dust-heap called “history.”