Provocative excerpts from primary and secondary sources (some with audio glosses). Read the rationale behind these sound bites for more information.
281-290 of 734 Sound Bites. [show all]
< 251-260 261-270 271-280 281-290 291-300 >
281) Any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it. (Oscar Wilde) [SoundBite #281]
282) The world/past comes to us always already as stories and . . . we cannot get out of these stories (narratives) to check if they correspond to the real world/past, because these "always already" narratives constitute "reality." (Keith Jenkins, Re-Thinking 9) [SoundBite #282]
283) Acquiring a "historically defined sense of belonging" is especially important in the United States, for this nation was created in order to realize a specific political vision, and it is the memory of that political vision which defines us as Americans. Memory is the glue that holds our political community together, and history is organized memory. Only by studying American history, by celebrating its heroes anew in each generation, by understanding its failures as well as lauding its achievements can students grasp the value of our political tradition. (William J. Bennett, Children 165) [SoundBite #283]
284) I have been forced to postulate a deep level of consciousness on which a historical thinker chooses conceptual strategies by which to explain or represent his data. On this level, I believe, the historian performs an essentially poetic act, in which he prefigures the historical field. . . . I call these types of prefiguration by the names of the four tropes of poetic language: Metaphor, Metonymy, Synecdoche, and Irony. (Hayden White, Metahistory x) [SoundBite #284]
285) To know nothing of what happened before you were born is to remain forever a child. (Cicero) [SoundBite #285]
286) For much of our history we have been present-minded; yet a usable past has been needed to give shape and substance to national identity. (Michael Kammen, Mystic 6) [SoundBite #286]
287) The shaping of a past worthy of public commemoration in the present is contested and involves a struggle for supremacy between advocates of various political ideas and sentiments. (John Bodnar 13) [SoundBite #287]
288) Surely film, with its exceptional capacity for verisimilitude, can show us history as it was, while the dry prose of an academic text can only tell us about it in a way that makes it seem more distant, less alive. (Mike Chopra-Gant 51) [SoundBite #1248]
289) Imagine an outline for the teaching of American history in which George Washington makes only a fleeting appearance and is never described as our first president. Or in which the foundings of the Sierra Club and the National Organization for Women are considered noteworthy events, but the first gathering of the U. S. Congress is not. This is, in fact, the version of history set forth in the soon-to-be-released National Standards for United States History. (Lynne V. Cheyney,) [SoundBite #290]
290) Who owns history? Everyone and no one -- which is why the study of the past is a constantly evolving, never-ending journey of discovery. (Eric Foner xix) [SoundBite #1364]
