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

271-280 of 734 Sound Bites. [show all]

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271) History is not obvious and inert but challenged and ever changing. (Donald F. Stevens 4) [SoundBite #271]

272) Nostalgia, with its wistful memories, is essentially history without guilt. Heritage is something that suffuses us with pride rather than shame. (Michael Kammen, Mystic 688) [SoundBite #272]

273) I distinguish among three kinds of strategy that can be used by historians to gain different kinds of "explanatory effect." I call these different strategies explanation by formal argument, explanation by emplotment, and explanation by ideological implication. Within each of these different strategies I identify four possible modes of articulation by which the historian can gain an explanatory affect of a specific kind. For arguments these are Formism, Organicism, Mechanism, and Contextualism; for emplotments there are the archetypes of Romance, Comedy, Tragedy, and Satire; and for the ideological implication there are the tactics of Anarchism, Conservatism, Radicalism, and Liberalism. A specific combination of modes comprises what I call the historiograhical "style" of a particular historian or philosopher of history. (Hayden White, Metahistory x) [SoundBite #273]

274) The melting pot idea hasn’t worked out as some thought it would, and now some people say that the people of the United States are more like a salad bowl than a melting pot. (Frances FitzGerald, America 8) [SoundBite #21]

275) One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over. We must not remember that Daniel Webster got drunk but only remember that he was a splendid constitutional lawyer. We must forget that George Washington was a slave owner . . . and simply remember the things we regard as creditable and inspiring. The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive and example; it paints perfect men and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth. (W. E. B. Du Bois 722) [SoundBite #275]

276) High school students hate History. (James W. Loewen, Lies My 12) [SoundBite #276]

277) Every time someone enters a movie theatre or pops in a DVD to watch a historical movie that part of history is being told again and is relearned by everyone watching. I believe that the idea that history is in the past is flawed. History is being made every second. History is not just what the "historians" tell us, but what we remember as people, what we remember as a city, what we remember as a nation or what we remember as a planet. History is available on many levels, and it is how each of us remembers and interprets it that creates the history we know. (Kelsey Duffy, Lehigh University) [SoundBite #1219]

278) History as a weapon is an abuse of history. The high purpose of history is not the presentation of self nor the vindication of identity but the recognition of complexity and the search for knowledge. (Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. 72) [SoundBite #278]

279) The corruption does not lie in the use of history as therapy; the corruption lies in the fact that the history being presented itself is corrupt. (Douglas McKerns, Lehigh University) [SoundBite #279]

280) The history-as-facts argument is not simply an uneducated view. It is also an ideological position of traditionalists and the political Right that particular facts, traditions, and heroic personalities, all untainted by “interpretation,” represent the “true” and “objective” history that citizens ought to know. (Gary Nash et. al. 10) [SoundBite #280]