History is malleable. A new cache of diaries can shed new light, and archeological evidence can challenge our popular assumptions. – Ken Burns
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. – Ken Burns
I think we too often make choices based on the safety of cynicism, and what were lead to is a life not fully lived. Cynicism is fear, and its worse than fear – its active disengagement. – 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. – Ken Burns
It is pleasant to be transferred from an office where one is afraid of a sergeant-major into an office where one can intimidate generals, and perhaps this is why history is so attractive to the more timid among us. We can recover self-confidence by snubbing the dead. – E.M. Forster, Abinger Harvest