Ken Burns Quotes

I really don’t make history; I preserve it.

Without oblivion, there is no remembrance possible. When both oblivion and memory are wise, when the general soul of man is clear, melodious, true, there may come a modern Iliad as memorial of the Past.

The past is our treasure. Its works, whether we know them or not, flourish in our lives with whatever strength they had. From it we draw provision for our journey, the collected wisdom whose harvests are all ours to reap and carry with us, though we may never live again in the fields that grew them.

Those who try to obliterate the past are injuring the present.

I think it's important to have some documentation of the past.

I have a strong impulse to protect history and time and the lineage of events.

It may not be art, but it is history.

History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life and brings us tidings of antiquity

History takes time... History makes memory.

History is a heavy thing everywhere.

The world that birthed that story is long gone, all its people are dead, but it continues to touch the present and future because someone cared enough about that world to keep it. To put it in words. To remember it.

The wisdom of our ancestors.

The heritage of the past is the seed that brings forth the harvest of the future.

I am not taking away the historical legacy, but it should not become a burden.

What we've inherited from our ancestors has never existed to this extent before. And if we fail to preserve it, it will never, ever exist again. So we cannot fail.

There is no past, as long as books shall live. Books make the past our heritage and our home.

Because men really respect only that which was founded of old and has developed slowly, he who wants to live on after his death must take care not only of his posterity but even more of his past.

In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream.

I guess that anything we manage to save from history is a miracle.

Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.

If we do not honor our past, we lose our future. If we destroy our roots, we cannot grow.

Write to register history, and name each thing. Write what should not be forgotten.

Having lost our present and our future, we had of necessity to bend all our endeavors to the past, which no one could take from us if only we were vigilant enough.

Take time to gather up the past so that you will be able to draw from your experience and invest them in the future.

I think the history and the past we have is just an energy we've built up to do what we do now.