When a documentary filmmaker, working in the style that I do, suggests that there has been a shooting ratio of 40 hours to every one hour of finished film, that doesn't mean that the other 39 are bad.
Ken BurnsRead
Good history is a question of survival. Without any past, we will deprive ourselves of the defining impression of our being.
Interpretation
What this quote means
History is essential for understanding ourselves and our identity.
In this quote, Ken Burns emphasizes the importance of history in shaping our identity and existence. He suggests that without knowledge of our past, we risk losing a sense of who we are and miss out on the lessons that history offers, which are crucial for our survival and understanding of the human experience.
Themes
HistoryIdentitySurvivalPastMemory
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture about the importance of cultural heritage, this quote can highlight the significance of understanding history.
More from Ken Burns
All quotes βI record all of my music with authentic instruments in a studio before we start editing, doing many, many versions. The music shapes the film as we edit so it has an organic relationship to the content.
Ken BurnsRead
It is the great arrogance of the present to forget the intelligence of the past
Ken BurnsRead
In most films music is brought in at the end, after the picture is more or less locked, to amplify the emotions the filmmaker wants you to feel.
Ken BurnsRead
Jazz is a very accurate, curiously accurate accompaniment to 20th century America.
Ken BurnsRead
You need, as a historian, essential triangulation from your subject and the only way you get that triangulation is through time.
Ken BurnsRead
Similar quotes
The Europeans not only colonialized most of the world, they began to colonialize information about the world and its people. In order to do this, they had to forget, or pretend to forget, all they had previously known abut the Africans.
John Henrik ClarkeRead
My staff was unanimous in believing that Japan was on the point of collapse and surrender.
Douglas MacarthurRead
I think one of the great disasters (in military history) is the way that the Second World War has become the defining reference point for every crisis and every conflict.
Antony BeevorRead
When I was growing up in Virginia, the Civil War was presented to me as glorious with dramatic courage and military honor. Later, I realized how death was central to the reality. It was at the core of women's lives. It's what they talked about most.
Drew Gilpin FaustRead
Use it, enjoy it, but always handle history with care.
Margaret MacmillanRead
Why is it that, next to the birthday of the Savior of the world, your most joyous and most venerated festival returns on this day (the 4th of July)? Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior?.
John Quincy AdamsRead