Provocative excerpts from primary and secondary sources (some with audio glosses). Read the rationale behind these sound bites for more information.
381-390 of 734 Sound Bites. [show all]
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381) How else can any past, which by definition comprises events, processes, structures and so forth, considered to be no longer perceivable, be represented in either consciousness or discourse except in an "imaginary" way. (Hayden White, Content 57) [SoundBite #381]
382) If it is true that the word can do many things that images cannot, what about the reverse – don’t images carry ideas and information that cannot be handled by the word? (Robert A. Rosenstone 5) [SoundBite #382]
383) Honest history is the weapon of freedom. (Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. 52) [SoundBite #383]
384) Although modern nations claim to be bound together by essential unities and progressively unfolding histories -- whether linked to civil or ethnic narratives -- what appears as a national consensus is only accomplished through the articulation of basically unstable and often conflicting interests and their suturing into a sense of a unified national identity. (Cecilia Elizabeth O' Leary 4) [SoundBite #384]
385) Cinematic historians do not simply create plots out of the documentary record of specific incidents or incorporate their own personal impressions; they also establish and dramatize their portrayals through images drawn from the rich mythology of American culture. . . . Consequently, the filmmakers produce part history, part myth. (Robert Brent Toplin, History 12) [SoundBite #385]
386) It used to be said that the facts speak for themselves. This is, of course, untrue. The facts speak only when the historian calls on them; it is he who decides to which facts to give the floor, and in what order or context. It was, I think, one of Pirandello's characters who said that a fact is like a sack -- it won't stand up till you've put something in it. (Edward Hallett Carr 5) [SoundBite #386]
387) We must accept that film cannot be seen as a window onto the past. What happens on the screen can never be more than an approximation of what was said and done in the past; what happens on the screen does not depict but rather points to, the events of the past. (Robert Rosenstone 71) [SoundBite #387]
388) We put our sense of nationhood at risk by failing to familiarize our young people with the story of how the society in which they live came to be. Knowledge of the ideas that have molded us and the ideals that have mattered to us functions as a kind of civic glue. Our history and literature give us symbols to share; they help us all, no matter how diverse our backgrounds, feel part of a common undertaking. (Lynne V. Cheyney 7) [SoundBite #388]
389) History is the polemics of the victor. (William F. Buckley, Jr., qtd. in Loewen 38) [SoundBite #389]
390) When an audience sees that a film is "based on a true story," we are inclined to believe that nearly everything is accurate. But the basis of film is interpretation. It is our duty as thinking viewers to question what we have seen. What really happened, and what is creative storytelling? Is the filmmaker trying to recreate history, prove a point, or both? (Karen Haberland, Lehigh University) [SoundBite #2527]
