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"You can learn as much about the history from reading about the present as you can vice versa, that is learning about the present through history, which is what I do for a living."
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"In the legal respect, after the execution of the supposed incendiaries, the other half of Moscow burned down."
"Up to 90% of all inventions of the world comes from the Protestant world."
"And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history-money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery-the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy."
"If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music and of aviation."
"In the parlor was a huge camera on wheels like the ones used in public parks, and the backdrop of a marine twilight, painted with homemade paints, and the walls papered with pictures of children at memorable moments: the first Communion, the bunny costume, the happy birthday. Year after year, during contemplative pauses on afternoons of chess, Dr. Urbino had seen the gradual covering over of the walls, and he had often thought with a shudder of sorrow that in the gallery of casual portraits lay the germ of the future of the city, governed and corrupted by those unknown children, where note even the ashes of his glory would remain."
"That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history."
"Our aadivasi sisters and brothers have played a paramount role in the freedom struggle. For hundreds of years, people across villages of the country kept alive the flame of sacrifices for attaining independence. They left no stone unturned in helping India attain freedom."
Explore more quotes by Ken Burns
"I began to feel that the drama of the truth that is in the moment and in the past is richer and more interesting than the drama of Hollywood movies. So I began looking at documentary films."
"In a sense I've made the same film over and over again. In all of them I've asked, 'Who are we as Americans?"
"I grew up certain for a while that I was going to be an anthropologist, until film turned my head."
"Wynton told us that Miles sold out, just wanted to make more money, just wanted to sell more records. I don't believe that Miles sold out but I'm not in a position to say."
"The stories from 1975 on are not finished and there is no resolve. I could spend 50 hours on the last 25 years of jazz and still not do it justice."
"I think the problem with a lot of the fusion music is that it's extremely predictable, it's a rock rhythm and the solos all play the same stuff and they play it over and over again and there's a certain musical virtuosity involved in it."
"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."
"I think my expectations for myself are much more severe and much more direct. You can't work on a film for six years without being your own toughest critic. So you can't really be distracted by the expectations based on your previous performance."
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