John Webster Quotes

The ruins proclaim the building was beautiful.

Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.

We've got to map all of our ancient history before it's gone because, let's face it, if we don't have a common heritage to share, something to get excited about, then what are we living for?

When we find something new at Giza, we announce it to the world. The Sphinx and the Pyramids are world treasures. We are the guardian's of these treasures, but they belong to the world.

I really don’t make history; I preserve it.

The Italians have had 2,000 years to fix up the Forum and just look at the place!

Well, there is something beautiful about ruins. I mean, in one sense it's not that different from going to Rome and looking at the Forum. But it's changing. It truly is. I'm optimistic but skeptical.

Museums are good things, places to look and absorb and learn.

We are like ignorant shepherds living on a site where great civilizations once flourished. The shepherds play with the fragments that pop up to the surface, having no notion of the beautiful structures of which they were once a part.

There's something very special about seeing history so clearly in front of you through that architecture that you just don't get in the U.S. If I was asked to choose where I'd most like to live, I would always choose London.

An important part of what the state does is preserving its history.

Museums, I love museums.

These places, and the ancient things you know, You won't know soon. I'm working on it now.'

It may not be art, but it is history.

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

Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.

… history is that which transforms documents into monuments

All great people glorify their history and look back upon their early attainments with a spiritualized vision.

Without a generation of civilized people to study history, to preserve its records, to absorb its lessons and relate them to its own problems, history, too, would lose its meaning.

That's what I want to do, ultimately: figure out a way to get the world engaged with discovery and protecting these ancient sites.

My films have a lot of historical context; I'm a huge fan of ruins. You see a lot of ruin work in my movies, I like ruins.

I love historical references.

Just as a fossil is 'petrified time,' so is an ancient artifact or text.

I want the Dead Sea, like Masada, to be part of UNESCO's world heritage.

Washington and Lincoln mean as much to us as any two men could mean to a civilization, a people, and age, but I told Mr. Coolidge when he dedicated this monument that this rock is being carved with a monument that will outlive our government.