Wynton Marsalis Quotes

We've got to know our history. We have to be able to bring our children to a place that they can be proud of.

Let us not suffer from a national amnesia that causes us to forget who and what we are.

We must teach our people the greatness of China's historical culture. In our educational program we must stress Chinese history and geography so that all may know and appreciate China's civilization of five thousand years and the far-flung boundaries of our ancient race. This will engender a greater faith in our own future.

A nation's life is about as long as its reverential memory.

Americans' great and secret fear is that America may turn out to be a phenomenon rather than a civilization.

A nation is a work of art and a work of time.

Cultural goods … are the source of the Nation's identity, continuity and development.

No people can live in the past - not even in its own past. But if it no longer has a link with its history, it must of necessity perish. Persia, crowded with hardship and glory, ordeals and hopes. With the help of the Almighty, the lessons of the past constitute the best guide for the citizens of the future.

People looked up to us for our values and leadership. But today, they laugh as we are busy debating whether one of the seven wonders of the world, the Taj Mahal, was actually built by Indians.

I realize the importance of retelling those stories is so that, one, we don't forget what our ancestors had to do so we can be where we are, and two, to just educate the newer generation. I'm being educated by all these films ['Race' and 'Selma'] and the things I've had the opportunity to be a part of, and kids even younger than me are being educated, too. It's important to make sure those stories never die.

India is still flinching from a cultural insult, still looking for its identity.

A nation is the sum of its memories, and when those memories are allowed to die, it is less of a nation.

The American dream has always depended on the dialogue between the present and the past. In our architecture, as in all our other arts-indeed, as in our political and social culture as a whole-ours has been a struggle to formulate and sustain a usable past.

Although I write to entertain, and try to keep my work free of didacticism, I do have a rather passionate belief in our need to be connected to - and to learn from - history.

When a nation goes down, or a society perishes, one condition may always be found; they forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what had brought them along.

An awareness of our past is essential to the establishment of our personality and our identity as Africans.

The Philippines, it might be said, is a country in search of an identity.

A nation must be embraced, rehabilitated and expressed as a tangible sign of human creativity and as an integral element of mankind's heritage.

The Network Generation are secure in, and proud of, their Scottishness. Unlike my generation that grew up in the '80s, they don't see our sense of identity as under threat.

It took me many years to understand that my identity is more Israeli than Jewish.

I have become aware on my travels that when a country loses the connection between its history and its traditional dress, something truly precious is lost.

I don't know whether it is fortunate or unfortunate, but I have no such thing as national pride. I don't feel proud that I am Iranian. I happen to be who I am.

Sometimes when Australians go overseas, it's as though the 'Aussie' is refined out of them. I don't know why. It's never happened to me, because I'm really proud of it. I'm not embarrassed about where I'm from or who I am any more. I know who I am. I don't fit in everywhere, but I know where I do fit in.

Canada is the only country in the world that knows how to live without an identity.

It is a most disgraceful shame the way in which Irishmen are brought up. They are ashamed of their language, institutions, and of everything Irish.