Bronson Pinchot Quotes

Ancient Egyptians went to great lengths to avoid change; they couldn't entirely do so, of course, but did preserve a cultural continuity for almost four thousand years.

The White House is the people's house. When you do historical restoration, that must be what it is.

It is very difficult to hang onto the relics of history.

It's interesting that the treatment of historical events by art precedes the civilisation of people through democracy.

Too many people take New York for granted. The primary reason is that history is not taught. That's outrageous in a city where the past is still visible.

Federal support for Morristown National Historic Park and the inclusion of additional lands present a unique opportunity for our government to express its commitment to preserving our past. Failing to do so may allow these historically important lands to go unprotected.

The Law and Justice government does not want a bunch of foreign historians to decide what goes on in 'their' museum.

I've often wondered if the trade-off for growing up in the relative newness and freshness of the West Coast was befuddlement when it comes to historical preservation. We don't have many old things, and we don't really know what to do with the few that are around when our default response is to compost or field burn.

How to save the old that's worth saving, whether in landscape, houses, manners, institutions, or human types, is one of our greatest problems, and the one that we bother least about.

With the destruction of history, contemporary events themselves retreat into a remote and fabulous realm of unverifiable stories, uncheckable statistics, unlikely explanations and untenable reasoning.

History fades into fable; fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy; the inscription molders from the tablet: the statue falls from the pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they but heaps of sand; and their epitaphs, but characters written in the dust?

When I stand in a library where is all the recorded wit of the world, but none of the recording, a mere accumulated, and not trulycumulative treasure; where immortal works stand side by side with anthologies which did not survive their month, and cobweb and mildew have already spread from these to the binding of those; and happily I am reminded of what poetry is,--I perceive that Shakespeare and Milton did not foresee into what company they were to fall. Alas! that so soon the work of a true poet should be swept into such a dust-hole!

I think it's clever how Rome have kept a load of old stuff. There's no overheads, yet people are going over there to see it.

It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years.

A historical property has morals and ethics of the society that created it and it can be revived. What I mean is that we can discover new possibilities from the process of dismantling, transforming, and recreating.

Art is how a culture records its life, how it poses questions for the next generation and how it will be remembered.

When eras die, their legacies Are left to strange police. Professors in New England guard The glory that was Greece.

There's such a craving to make Egypt white or Asian, people don't just even listen to you. When you explain why would anyone build anything as enduring as the Pyramids in Africa before they would build anything of that nature at home?

We live in what virtually amounts to a museum - which does not happen to a lot of people.

One great feature of modern society is the institutionalized respect we give to processes designed to destroy the past.

History will die if not irritated. The only service I can do to my profession is to serve as a flea.

Libraries and museums are the DNA of our culture.

I prefer my history dead. Dead history is writ in ink, the living sort in blood.

Nobody likes to see that which they've invested in disappear from the face of the earth before they've even died. This is not cool. We can now see what the landmarks, in fact are.

The ruins proclaim the building was beautiful.