Provocative excerpts from primary and secondary sources (some with audio glosses). Read the rationale behind these sound bites for more information.
401-410 of 734 Sound Bites. [show all]
< 401-410 411-420 421-430 431-440 441-450 >
401) History is neither written nor made without love or hate, Mommsen wrote. The historian is inevitably an artist of a kind as he composes his narrative, selecting, shaping, coloring. (Herbert J. Muller 31) [SoundBite #401]
402) The fact that the grim mood of the moment happens to fall much closer to the industry's abiding alienation is no evidence that the entertainment establishment has suddenly begun responding to the people; it suggests, if anything, that the public may finally be feeling the influence of Hollywood's many years of persistent negativity. (Michael Medved 224) [SoundBite #402]
403) Postmodern historians think that human beings can live ironic, reflexive, historicised lives, without the magic, incantations, mythologisations and mystifications spun by certaintist historians. (Keith Jenkins, What 38) [SoundBite #403]
404) All profound changes of consciousness, by their very nature, bring with them characteristic amnesias. Out of such oblivions, in specific historical circumstances, spring narratives. After experiencing the physiological and emotional changes produced by puberty, it is impossible to "remember" the consciousness of childhood. . . . Out of this estrangement comes a conception of personhood, identity . . . which, because it can not be "remembered," must be narrated. . . . As with modern persons, so it is with nations. Awareness of being imbedded in secular, serial time, with all its implications of continuity, yet of "forgetting" the experience of this continuity . . . engenders the need for a narrative of "identity." (Benedict Anderson 204-5) [SoundBite #404]
405) It is possible to view historical consciousness as a superficially Western prejudice by which the presumed superiority of modern, industrial society can be retroactively substantiated. (Hayden White, Metahistory 2) [SoundBite #405]
406) Hollywood films may get all the details wrong, they may perpetuate misinformation and ignorance about everything from the frontier to the family, yet they might still encourage ways of asking and answering questions conducive to historical investigation. (George Lipsitz 165) [SoundBite #406]
407) A sense of the past is a way of being in the present. At its best it is a way of arguing with ourselves, a means of rethinking who we might become by rethinking who we once were. (David Harlan 209) [SoundBite #407]
408) Accurate historical knowledge is essential for social sanity. (Bernard Bailyn 12) [SoundBite #408]
409) We in a way know more about the past than the people who lived in it. (Keith Jenkins, Re-Thinking 13) [SoundBite #409]
410) The history of America is composed of dates, wars, economic downfalls, epidemics of disease, social conflict, treaties, and politics. All gathered and put cohesively together in numerous volumes of books. Yet, events are always open to interpretation. Just because the cover of a film says "based on a true story" does not mean that the screen will be as concrete as the information in a encyclopedia. (Adrianna Abreu, Lehigh University) [SoundBite #2531]
