Provocative excerpts from primary and secondary sources (some with audio glosses). Read the rationale behind these sound bites for more information.

141-150 of 734 Sound Bites. [show all]

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141) Reason has arranged the infinite variety of History to delight the reader and educate the soul. For inquiring souls there is nothing more attractive than History. (Theophylactus Simocatta, c. A.D. 500) [SoundBite #141]

142) The study of the past with one eye, so to speak, upon the present is the source of all sins and sophistries in history. . . . It is the essence of what we mean by the word "unhistorical." (Herbert Butterfield, qtd. in Carr 35-36) [SoundBite #142]

143) A society sure of its values had needed history only to celebrate the glories of the past, but a society of changing values and consequent confusions also needed history as a utilitarian guide. (Thomas Cochran, qtd. by Marwick 327) [SoundBite #143]

144) It may, therefore, be worthwhile to examine the arguments for "disinterested, neutral, scientific, objective" scholarship. If there is to be a revolution in the uses of knowledge to correspond to the revolution in society, it will have to begin by challenging the rules which sustain the wasting of knowledge. Let me cite a number of them, and argue briefly for new approaches. . . . Rule 5. A scholar must, in order to be "rational," avoid "emotionalism." True, emotion can distort. But it can also enhance. . . . Reason, to be accurate, must be supplemented by emotion. (Howard Zinn 8-9, 12-13) [SoundBite #144]

145) When information which properly belongs to the public is systematically withheld by those in power, the people soon become ignorant of their own affairs, distrustful of those who manage them, and -- eventually -- incapable of determining their own destinies. (Richard M. Nixon, qtd. in Weiner) [SoundBite #145]

146) It is true that history cannot satisfy our appetite when we are hungry, nor keep us warm when the cold wind blows. But it is true that if younger generations do not understand the hardships and triumphs of their elders, then we will be a people without a past. As such, we will be like water without a source, a tree without roots. --Wall inscription, New York, China History Project (Gary Nash et. al. 3) [SoundBite #146]

147) The historian, investigating any event in the past, makes a distinction between what may be called the outside and the inside of an event. . . . The historian is never concerned with either of these to the exclusion of the other. He is investigating not mere events (whereby a mere event I mean one which has only an outside and no inside) but actions, and an action is the unity of the outside and inside of an event. He is interested in the crossing of the Rubicon only in its relation to Republican law. . . . His work may begin by discovering the outside of an event, but it can never end there; he must always remember that the event was an action, and that his main task is to think himself into this action, to discern the thought of its agent. (R. G. Collingwood 213) [SoundBite #147]

148) A case can be made for the ultimate power and influence of visual images, which physically present the viewer with an experience that encapsulates them in a visual world that seems incredibly real, as opposed to literature, which can make less of a definitive impression on the mind. And, yes, perhaps writing in itself does not produce the immediate appearance of meaning. It is about what you carry with you, what you can bring to the written words on a page, and a great part of the meaning of literature is what it is able to create in the reader through these personal associations. You could argue that literature, as a form of art, makes humans “human.” When we read a book we ought not to be passive; it is necessary to think and feel and act, and in this way, reading literature is an incredibly divergent experience from viewing film. The direct meaning of the written word does not hold us captive with its forthright and overwhelming cinematography as does a film. With literature, direct meaning might not be made explicit by an author, it is more indefinable, it sends us back to the history of our own lives and how we perceive the world, which is an ultimately human experience. (Carolyn Stine, Lehigh University) [SoundBite #1238]

149) Perhaps the single greatest abuse of history is committed by those who try to make it a respository of moral examples and caveats. The ascription of this function of history is typified in the statement of Lord Bolingbroke that "history is philosophy teaching by examples." The concept of history as instruction for good citizenship was further elaborated by Bolingbroke in the following statement: "An application of any study, that tends neither directly nor indirectly to make us better men and better citizens, is at best but a specious and ingenious sort of idleness. . . . The study of history seems to me, of all the other, the most proper to train us up to private and public virtue." (Lester D. Stephens 103) [SoundBite #149]

150) National cultures are composed not only of cultural institutions, but of symbols and representations. A national culture is a "discourse" -- a way of constructing meanings which influences and organizes both our actions and our conceptions of ourselves. (Stuart Hall 292) [SoundBite #150]