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

331-340 of 734 Sound Bites. [show all]

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331) We should be very cautious, however, about taking for granted the cohesion, clarity, and retentiveness of either civic or popular memory. Abundant evidence demonstrates that both can be sorely truncated or blurred. How often have we been exhorted to recall some public catastrophe, often a humiliation, precisely because amnesia seems ominous. “Remember the Alamo!” “Remember the Maine!” “Remember Pearl Harbor!” (Michael Kammen, Mystic 9) [SoundBite #331]

332) Memory says, "I did that." Pride replies, "I could not have done that." Eventually memory yields. (Friedrich Nietzsche 86) [SoundBite #332]

333) That we must attain full consciousness is so true it makes me want to buy billboards. (Peter Weisman, Lehigh University) [SoundBite #333]

334) Why are history textbooks so bad? Nationalism is one of the culprits. Textbooks are often muddled by the conflicting desires to promote inquiry and to indoctrinate blind patriotism. (James W. Loewen, Lies My 14) [SoundBite #334]

335) History is a complicated tale of multiple voices contesting for authority. (Abrash and Walkowitz 205) [SoundBite #335]

336) As Sir Winston Churchill put it, "The further and deeper you look back, the more you can see forward." (Boyd C. Shafer 154) [SoundBite #336]

337) Let it be said that we told our children their story, and the whole story, the long record of our glories, of our failures, of our aspirations, our sins, our achievements and our victories. Then let us leave them to determine their own view of it all: America in the totality of its acts. (William J. Bennett, Children 166) [SoundBite #337]

338) Let me start with the ideology of nationalism. . . . The nation is the source of all political and social power, and loyalty to the nation overrides all other allegiances. . . . Human beings must identify with a nation if they want to be free and realize themselves. (Anthony D. Smith 74) [SoundBite #338]

339) The most obvious but perhaps least satisfactory way that historians can use movies is as a mirror of the age. (Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. xi) [SoundBite #339]

340) The neo-conservative educational critics champion heroic stories told from one point of view that make the power hierarchies of the present appear natural and inevitable. (George Lipsitz 24) [SoundBite #340]