Latest Ken Burns Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• The reason why you do history, and particularly why you do war, is that you want to make sure that in the next war, some lessons were learned. There's a saying: "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Or Ecclesiastes: "What has been will be again. What has been done will be done again." Human nature always superimposes itself - its strength and its frailty over the rush of chaos of ongoing events - and we can perceive patterns and themes and motifs.

  Ken Burns

  War, Done, Chaos

  Source: www.esquire.com

• World War II is smothered in sentimentality and nostalgia. What's interesting about Vietnam is that sentimentality is just not there, so you're given kind of a clean access to it in one way. It's also a war that represents a failure for the United States. Many people came back feeling like they never wanted to talk about it again. And so we developed a national amnesia.

  Ken Burns

  War, Interesting, People

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• Civics is in fact politics, and politics is how things work not only in the political realm but in every other realm. It may be this simple mechanical glitch that unites everything. This is my philosophy.

  Ken Burns

  Philosophy, Simple, Political

  "Q&A: Ken Burns on Why Memorizing the Gettysburg Address Matters". Interview with Dave Gilson, www.motherjones.com. April 14, 2014.

• 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.

  Ken Burns

  Art, Land, Community

  "Ken Burns and Yusef Salaam Talk THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE; Plus Burns Talks Upcoming Projects like THE ROOSEVELTS, JACKIE ROBINSON and VIETNAM". Interview with Sheila Roberts, collider.com. November 17, 2012.

• Filmmaking is essentially about entertainment, but it's amazing to realize that it has this other muscle that could actually help. Do you know what I mean? People permit entertainment to wash over them, but every once and a while, entertainment - and this is entertaining - also galvanizes something else and that would be a really good thing to have happen in this case.

  Ken Burns

  Mean, People, Would Be

  "Ken Burns and Yusef Salaam Talk THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE; Plus Burns Talks Upcoming Projects like THE ROOSEVELTS, JACKIE ROBINSON and VIETNAM". Interview with Sheila Roberts, collider.com. November 17, 2012.