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"I have made a film about jazz that tries to look through jazz to see what it tells us about who we are as a people. I think that jazz is a spectacularly accurate model of democracy and a kind of look into our redemptive future possibilities."
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"It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other."

"He makes people pleased with him by making them first pleased with themselves."

"People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy."

"Prune - prune businesses, products, activities, people. Do it annually."

"Some people bear three kinds of trouble - the ones they've had, the ones they have, and the ones they expect to have."
Explore more quotes by Ken Burns

"I have made all my films for my children with the exception of my first film because my oldest daughter wasn't born when I was making the film about the Brooklyn Bridge."

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

"I enjoy total creative control right now. Nobody tells me to make it longer, shorter, better, sexier, more violent, whatever."

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

"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 active disengagement."

"I never, ever want to apologize for a film. If it's bad I'll say it's my fault. And that's what I can say so far in all the films that I've done, that if you don't like it, it's entirely my fault."

"I 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."

"You need, as a historian, essential triangulation from your subject and the only way you get that triangulation is through time."
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