Provocative excerpts from primary and secondary sources (some with audio glosses). Read the rationale behind these sound bites for more information.
651-660 of 734 Sound Bites. [show all]
< 651-660 661-670 671-680 681-690 691-700 >
651) We need to establish a certain amount of distrust in everything we view. (Harrison Lawrence, Lehigh University) [SoundBite #2954]
652) Where national memories are concerned, griefs are of more value than triumphs, for they impose duties, and require a common effort. (Ernest Renan 19) [SoundBite #325]
653) So long as history is a fluid, dynamic field, it will uneasily mingle commemoration and critique. Americans have never agreed on a single, unified version of our past, nor should they if our country is to remain democratic. Nor can anyone find a people anywhere in the world who agree on the course of their national history. Like Americans, they vigorously debate heroes and villains, high points and low points, tragic mistakes and towering successes. (Gary Nash et. al. 22) [SoundBite #330]
654) Historians cut and paste the events of the past into a collage of history. (Travis Statham, Lehigh University) [SoundBite #1837]
655) Alabama law used to require that schools avoid "textbooks containing anything partisan, prejudicial, or inimical to the interests of the [white] people of the State" or that would "cast a reflection on their past history." Texas still requires that "textbooks shall not contain material which serves to undermine authority." (James W. Loewen 273) [SoundBite #1308]
656) In theory, the National Symbolic sutures the body and subjectivity to the public sphere of discourse, time, and space that constitutes the "objective" official political reality of the nation. To install such a field of reference requires the production of what Friedrich Nietzsche calls a "mnemotechnics," an official technology of memory whose purpose is to burn into the minds of subjects their intrinsically social experience and responsibility. (Lauren Berlant 34) [SoundBite #350]
657) I am reminded of Housman's remark that "accuracy is a duty, not a virtue." To praise a historian for his accuracy is like praising an architect for using well seasoned timber or properly mixed concrete in his building. It is a necessary condition of his work, but not his essential function. . . . [Facts] belong to the category of the raw materials of the historian rather than of history itself. (Edward Hallett Carr 5) [SoundBite #360]
658) Memory is pliant to power. What a popular perception. Everyone seems to know that powerful people can rewrite the past. When can the powerless rewrite the past? . . . Powerless individuals can rewrite the past, if they unite through collective action. (Timothy Kubal xiii, xv) [SoundBite #2132]
659) How wars are remembered can be just as important as how they were fought. (Jill Lepore, qtd. in Chadwick 5) [SoundBite #2270]
660) One must return to the past in order to move forward. (Sankofa : West African saying) [SoundBite #2321]
