Provocative excerpts from primary and secondary sources (some with audio glosses). Read the rationale behind these sound bites for more information.
361-370 of 734 Sound Bites. [show all]
< 351-360 361-370 371-380 381-390 391-400 >
361) History should not just be facts out of a textbook; rather it should be an interactive activity encouraging individuals to interpret the event and to logically draw their own opinions and conclusions. Film makes this possible. (Brian Carroll, Lehigh University) [SoundBite #1840]
362) [Peter Davis] pointed out that he would not want to get his history from historical films any more than he would want to get his science from science fiction. (Robert Brent Toplin, "Filmmaker" 1213) [SoundBite #362]
363) Is history suposed to create ethnic pride and self-confidence? Or should history convey some kind of objective truth about the past? Must history be continually rewritten to undo the perpetuation of racial and sexual stereotypes? (Joyce Appleby et. al. 5) [SoundBite #363]
364) If a picture, as we generally agree, is worth a thousand words, then a motion picture or a movie, is worth millions of words because it is words in action. (Ray B. Browne ix) [SoundBite #364]
365) Take national anthems, for example, sung on national holidays. No matter how banal the words and mediocre the tunes, there is in this singing an experience of simultaneity. At precisely such moments, people wholly unknown to each other utter the same verses to the same melody. The image: unisonance. (Benedict Anderson 145) [SoundBite #365]
366) The apparent ease with which children learn is their ruin. (Rousseau, qtd. in Hirsh xiii) [SoundBite #366]
367) The present is a void, and the American writer floats in that void because the past that survives in the common mind of the present is a past without living value. But is this the only possible past? If we need another past so badly, is it inconceivable that we might discover one, that we might even invent one? Discover, invent a usuable past we certainly can, and that is what a vital criticism always does. . . . The past is an inexhaustible storehouse of apt aptitudes and adaptable ideals; it opens of itself at the touch of desire; it yields up, now this treasure, now that, to anyone who comes to it armed with a capacity for personal choices. If, then, we cannot use the past our professors offer us, is there any reason why we should not create others of our own? . . . Every people selects from the experience of every other people whatever contributes most vitally to its own development. (Van Wyck Brooks 339) [SoundBite #367]
368) We are forever drawing upon the past. It not only constitutes all the "experience" by which we have learned: it is the source of our major interests, our claims, our rights, and our duties. It is the source of our very identity. (Herbert J. Muller 30-31) [SoundBite #368]
369) To withhold traditional culture from the school curriculum, and therefore from students, in the name of progressive ideas is in fact an unprogressive action that helps preserve the political and economic status quo. (E. D. Hirsch, Jr. 23-24) [SoundBite #369]
370) History is what you make of it. Give the right director a camera, a cast, and a reason, and he can convince the world that 1929 was a good year for the economy. (Jeffrey Herrigel, Lehigh University) [SoundBite #2525]
