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

41-50 of 734 Sound Bites. [show all]

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41) The most direct route to the American mind was through the nation’s great agencies of mass communication. (William L. Van Deburg 19) [SoundBite #41]

42) Movies do more than entertain. They also teach, whether or not individual filmmakers have such intentions or pretensions. (Carlos E. Cortes 53) [SoundBite #42]

43) The first [question] is that of the relative adequacy of what we might call "historiophoty" (the representation of history and our thought about it in filmic images and filmic discourse) to the criteria of truth and accuracy presumed to govern the professional practice of historiography (the representation of history in verbal images and written discourse). (Hayden White, Historiography 1193) [SoundBite #43]

44) Traditional histories do not take the nation at its own word, but, for the most part, they do assume that the problem lies with the interpretation of "events" that have a certain transparency or privileged visibility. (Homi K. Bhabha 3) [SoundBite #44]

45) What happens when people of different ethnic origins, speaking different languages and professing different religions, settle in the same geographic locality and live under the same political sovereignty? Unless a common purpose binds them together, tribal hostilities will drive them apart. (Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. 10) [SoundBite #45]

46) Like writing history with lightning. (Woodrow Wilson, in regard to Birth of a Nation) [SoundBite #46]

47) Many critics have labeled Hollywood a “dream factory,” claiming that its filmmakers purvey escapism and mindless entertainment. (Leslie Fishbein 75) [SoundBite #47]

48) History as a record consists of three states, or processes, usually so skillfully blended that they appear to be a single one. . . . the collection of what are thought to be relevant facts . . . the organization of those facts into some coherent pattern . . . interpretation of the facts and of the pattern. (Henry Steele Commager 5) [SoundBite #48]

49) The rages of ages will inform. (Thomas Hardy, qtd. in Nash et. al. 259) [SoundBite #49]

50) I remember as a kid hearing that in Germany they didn't teach the holocaust in the history books so that kids didn't think badly about their country -- I was appalled. But Americans do the same thing. We know how strong a collective memory is in promoting nationalism and therefore do not want to besmudge our "America rules" image with "bad" American history. (Wendy Kuhn, Lehigh University) [SoundBite #50]