Ken Burns Quotes

History is what we bring to it, not just the events themselves, but how we interpret those events.

It may be enough to study history in all its nuance and ambiguity for its own sake. But there is no country free of the need to find new ways of reading the past as an inspiring way of thinking about everything else, including the present.

History justifies whatever we want it to. It teaches absolutely nothing, for it contains everything and gives examples of everything.

History needs distance, perspective. Facts and events which are too well attested cease, in some sort, to be malleable.

History is not a catalogue but...a convincing version of events.

History isn't the lies of the victors, as I once glibly assured Old Joe Hunt; I know that now. It's more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious or defeated.

How real is history? Is it just an enormous soup so full of disparate ingredients that it is uncharacterizable?

History is a capricious creature. It depends on who writes it.

Not all that is presented to us as history has really happened; and what really happened did not actually happen the way it is presented to us; moreover, what really happened is only a small part of all that happened. Everything in history remains uncertain, the largest events as well as the smallest occurrence.

History is the study of lies, anyway, because no witness ever recalls events with total accuracy, not even eyewitnesses.

Since Caesar, we know his historians are liars. The good writers get read. Bad history doesn't get read.

One sought not absolute truth. One sought only a spool on which to wind the thread of history without breaking it.

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody understands at the time--and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

Historians relate not so much what is done as what they would have believed.

The study of the past with one eye upon the present is the source of all sins and sophistries in history. It is the essence of what we mean by the word "unhistorical."

History is often not what actually happened but what is recorded as such.

History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten.

History is so indifferently rich, that a case for almost any conclusion from it can be made by a selection of instances.

History is nothing except monsters or victims. Or witnesses.

Our history is a passion for me. I feel that we leave out so much information and huge gaps in the American story and it makes it hard for people to really understand that we are all intricately related as Americans. So I am attracted to historically based projects because we entertain and learn something at the same time. I just love that combination.

History is not what happened 200 or 2,000 years ago; it's a story about what happened 200 or 2,000 years ago.

History is idle gossip about a happening whose truth is lost the instant it has taken place.

History is not usually what has happened. History is what some people have thought to be significant.

History will only ever be partial, to a large extent history tells us what we think should be remembered and what should be forgotten, I find that really problematic.

A history in which every particular incident may be true may on the whole be false.