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

241-250 of 734 Sound Bites. [show all]

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241) Historian Michael H. Frisch has argued that the relationship between history and memory is peculiarly fractured in contemporary American life. He is partially correct because the social diversity of the United States really means that we have multiple memories rather than a monolithic collective memory. (Michael Kammen, Mystic 687-88) [SoundBite #241]

242) The motion picture industry must remain free…I want no censorship. (President Franklin Roosevelt, qtd. in Mintz and Roberts 19) [SoundBite #242]

243) Even some explicitly “historical” films are chiefly important for what they say about the era in which they were made. Cecile B. DeMille's lavish depiction of Ancient Egypt in his The Ten Commandments (1956) served as a dusty mirror to the soulless materialism he perceived in 1950s America. (Marc C. Carnes 10) [SoundBite #243]

244) In the act of separating story from non-story, we [historians] wield the most powerful yet dangerous tool of the narrative form. It is a commonplace of modern literary theory that the very authority with which narrative presents its vision of reality is achieved by obscuring large portions of that reality. Narrative succeeds to the extent that it hides the discontinuities, ellipses, and contradictory experiences that would undermine the intended meaning of its story. Whatever its overt purpose, it cannot avoid a covert exercise of power: it inevitably sanctions some voices while silencing others. (William Cronon 1349-50) [SoundBite #244]

245) While the director’s and screenwriter’s explicit denials of any historiographical intent provide convenient defenses against claims of distortion and historical inaccuracy, and while their disavowal may provide some excuse for inattention to the minutiae of historical events, it is difficult for the makers of a film that is in some way based on historical facts to escape the demands of historical fidelity so easily. (Mike Chopra-Gant 80) [SoundBite #1247]

246) The justification of all historical study must ultimately be that it enhances our self-consciousness, enables us to see ourselves in perspective, and helps us towards that greater freedom which comes from self-knowledge. (Keith Thomas, qtd. by Marwick 328) [SoundBite #246]

247) Personal ownership of the past has always been a vital strand in the ideology of all ruling classes. (J. H. Plumb, qtd. in Nash, "American" 144) [SoundBite #247]

248) If the sin of the old history was to impose a false unity on diverse experiences and perspectives, the problem for the new history is to give voice to the diversity of perspectives while still constructing overall themes and explanatory paradigms. (Gary B. Nash, "American" 146) [SoundBite #248]

249) History in Burckhardt's words is "the record of what one age finds worthy of note in another." The past is intelligible to us only in light of the present; and we can fully understand the present only in the light of the past. To enable a man to understand the society of the past and to increase his mastery over the society of the present is the dual function of history. (Edward Hallett Carr 49) [SoundBite #249]

250) To yearn for a single, and usually simple, explanation of the chaotic materials of the past, to search for a single thread in that most tangled of all tangled skeins, is a sign of immaturity. (Henry Steele Commager 88) [SoundBite #250]