Carol Loomis Quotes

Sir, I see a lot of documents in my day-to-day business, and I can't tell you every document that I've seen. It may have passed across my desk. It may not have passed across my desk. I truthfully cannot answer that question, other than to say I don't remember.

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

Some archives and record offices are housed in your local museum or library; others have their own stand-alone building. Wherever they are, they are a treasure trove.

What's an archive, son? Is that anything like a closet?

The last time when I handed over information was in February or March 1949.

There can be no history without archives.

I'm so concerned with morgues and libraries of the newspapers.

The Woodruff Library Archives has done a phenomenal job archiving my son's materials.

No one loves an archive better than I do. I can smell a good one half-a-block away - all that brittle papyrus dust is music to my nostrils.

Most archivists don't like surprises. That's why we work in the past.

It is therefore necessary that memorable things should he committed to writing, and not wholly betaken to slippery memory which seldom yields a certain reckoning.

We still have documents from the First World War that have not yet been declassified. I have no idea why. It boggles the mind.

The decision makers at HUD appear to have carried the reduction of paperwork to the extreme. There are practically no records.

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.

History written today is much more accurate than history written in the 18th century.

Kissinger's monopoly on this historical record has driven many scholars to distraction. Groups of lawyers, scholars, journalists and archivists have used pronunciamento, lawsuit, and other crowbars in a usually vain effort to open Kissinger's Library of Congress cache.

I never recreate dialogue. I have often been asked by people, 'You must have made this up because this is dialogue, right?' Anything in my books that is in quotes comes from some kind of living historical document: a letter, a memoir, a court transcript, a newspaper interview.

We want to free our citizens from the burden of excessive paper documents in every office. We want paperless transactions. We will set up a digital locker for every citizen to store personal documents that can be shared across departments.

I think, Queen Victoria's diaries, I think you can get them if you go to the British Library.

It is a fiction to imagine that the haphazard paper chits of old are more private than the modern digital alternative. Paper records have always presented a security risk.

Archives can be inspiring but overwhelming. You have to forget them - especially when the whole world has been knocking them off. Everyone shops the same flea markets.

One thing that struck me in my study of history is how people are excluded. I don't mean just racial minorities or women. Pretty much all poor people who don't have documents are excluded from history and its records. People who were illiterate usually didn't leave any primary documents.

In boxing, as with other government-regulated activity, the integrity of public records should be preserved.

As historians, we spend days in archives, gazing at account books. We train would-be historians in the arts of deciphering letters and documents, early Latin, scribal handwriting, medieval French.

I still like the physicality of papers.