I think we too often make choices based on the safety of cynicism, and what we're lead to is a life not fully lived. Cynicism is fear, and it's worse than fear - it's an active disengagement.

Ken Burns

Categorized in : Thinking Fear Safety

The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It's our great contribution to the arts.

music country art

It is the great arrogance of the present to forget the intelligen... by Ken Burns

It is the great arrogance of the present to forget the intelligence of the past

arrogance inspiring past

Do something that will last and be beautiful. It doesn't have to be a bridge-or a symphony or book or a business. It could be the look in the eye of a child you raise or a simple garden you tend. Do something that will last and be beautiful.

beautiful book children

History isn't really about the past - settling old scores. It's about defining the present and who we are.

who-we-are history past

Do not lose your enthusiasm. In its Greek etymology, the word ent... by Ken Burns

Do not lose your enthusiasm. In its Greek etymology, the word enthusiasm means, "God in us."

etymology greek mean

People tend to forget that the word "history" contains the word "... by Ken Burns

People tend to forget that the word "history" contains the word "story".

stories history people

Good history is a question of survival. Without any past, we will deprive ourselves of the defining impression of our being.

survival historical past

I'm a filmmaker. I'm an artist. I've chosen to work in history the way someone might choose to work in still lifes or landscapes.

landscape artist might

I subscribe to William Faulkner's' view that history is not just about what we were before but who we are now.

who-we-are views

Louis Armstrong is quite simply the most important person in American music. He is to 20th century music (I did not say jazz) what Einstein is to physics.

jazz physics important

History is malleable. A new cache of diaries can shed new light, and archeological evidence can challenge our popular assumptions.

halloween light challenges

I am passionately interested in understanding how my country works. And if you want to know about this thing called the United States of America you have to know about the Civil War.

war country america

There are no ordinary lives. by Ken Burns

There are no ordinary lives.

ordinary-life ordinary

I don't think that there has been a film that I've done that hasn't been influenced by libraries and archives.

archives library thinking

I have come to the realization that history is not a fixed thing, a collection of precise dates, facts and events (even cogent commencement quotes) that add up to a quantifiable, certain, confidently known, truth. It is a mysterious and malleable thing.

events realization add

We all think that an exception is going to be made in our case and were going to live forever. Being a human is actually arriving at the understanding that thats not going to be. Story is there to remind us that its just OK.

understanding forever thinking

We strain to listen to the ghosts and echoes of our inexpressibly wise past, and we have an obligation to maintain these places, to provide these sanctuaries, so that people may be in the presence of forces larger than those of the moment.

echoes wise past

The only art form that Americans have created that's recognized around the world is jazz music born in a community that had the peculiar experience of being unfree in a free land.

community land art

By its very nature, no one person can ever be the center of Jazz. by Ken Burns

By its very nature, no one person can ever be the center of Jazz.

jazz-music jazz music

I treat the photograph as a work of great complexity in which you can find drama. Add to that a careful composition of landscapes, live photography, the right music and interviews with people, and it becomes a style.

photography drama people