Ricky Jay Quotes

With the end of the Victorian era, we passed into what I feel I must call the terrible 20th century

Pick up any history book, and I suggest you begin with studying the 20th century, and you will find that a large part of the history of our species has all the characteristics we would normally associate with a nightmare or an insane hallucination.

The great wars of the 20th Century made it into the worst Century ever.

You know, the period of World War I and the Roaring Twenties were really just about the same as today. You worked, and you made a living if you could, and you tired to make the best of things. For an actor or a dancer, it was no different then than today. It was a struggle.

It seems we're not only uninformed about our present, we're ignorant of our past.

I actually love history. I've devoured book after book of stories from World War I and World War II. They're really two sections of world history that really interest me.

If you look back at the history of the twentieth century, Germany alone had practically destroyed Russia several times.

I was born in the Coolidge administration. Can you believe that? So I've seen a lot of politics.

The 20th century saw far greater catastrophes than September 11th, as bad as it was, and they didn't render literature or art or music irrelevant. In fact, I think that literature and art help us to understand - sometimes they provide narratives and metaphors for understanding history, for understanding recent catastrophes.

I like American history, so I was aware of the participants and a lot of it.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt and J.F Kennedy were Presidents in very different times.

Each decade, I've lived in that decade, so I could easily shed the '20s, the '30s, the '40s.

We live in a world where amnesia is the most wished-for state. When did history become a bad word?

I'm really fascinated with anything that takes place between the 1920s up through the 1960s. In some ways it feels familiar, and in other ways it feels like it's from another planet.

I don't know anything about the history of music.

The year of my birth, 1940, was the fulcrum of America in the twentieth century, when the nation was balanced precariously between the darkness of the Great Depression on one side and the storms of war in Europe and the Pacific on the other.

I actually love history. I've devoured book after book of stories from World War I and World War II. They're really two sections of world history that really interest me. I knew very extensively a lot about World War I.

Postwar U.S. was the world's leader in science and technology. The investment in science research was staggering.

Britain kept its position as the dominant world power well into the 20th century despite steady decline. By the end of World War II, dominance had shifted decisively into the hands of the upstart across the sea, the United States, by far the most powerful and wealthy society in world history.

I started with the book 'Boardwalk Empire' and then immersed myself in the history of Atlantic City, World War I, the temperance movement, Prohibition, pop culture. I even read the news and magazines of the period just to soak in it. That was before I even started thinking of the story.

The big wars of the 20th Century, like the two World Wars, Korea and Vietnam, were all wars about elite control.

Things have changed so much. People walked away from a simple life we had in the '20s and '30s, and I am glad that I am able to touch that period in our lives with the shows that I do and with the music that I do.

The 20th century was a test bed for big ideas - fascism, communism, the atomic bomb.

Part of my head will always be in the years after World War II - the five years before Korea started.

I think I would have done very well as a writer in the Forties. I think the last time America was a great country was then or not long after. It was before Vietnam, before Watergate.