Provocative excerpts from primary and secondary sources (some with audio glosses). Read the rationale behind these sound bites for more information.
71-80 of 734 Sound Bites. [show all]
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71) It [an event, object, etc.] doesn’t exist meaningfully until after it’s been represented. (Stuart Hall) [SoundBite #71]
72) History is a kind of research or inquiry . . . . generically it belongs to what we call the sciences; that is, forms of thought whereby we ask questions and try to answer them. . . . Science is finding things out: and in that sense history is a science. . . . What kinds of things does history find out? I answer, res gestae; actions of human beings that have been done in the past. . . . history is the science of res gestae, the attempt to answer questions about human actions done in the past. (R. G. Collingwood 9) [SoundBite #72]
73) The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. . . . We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. (Abraham Lincoln, Annual Message to Congress, 1862) [SoundBite #73]
74) The society that was once uniform is now a patchwork of rich and poor, old and young, men and women, blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Indians. (Frances FitzGerald, America 11) [SoundBite #74]
75) One of the signs of emerging democracy in countries that until recently have been ruled by authoritarian governments is that the citizens start arguing publicly about history. (Gary Nash et. al. 259) [SoundBite #75]
76) Based loosely on history but forgoing the complexities and contradictions of history in favour of other narrative and dramatic considerations, while also having an almost unique power to shape popular perceptions of what "really happened," the historical film provides a seductive appearance of historicity that all too easily translates, in the popular imaginary, to a faithful rendition of historical events that, in reality, it can never be. For this reason attempts to represent history on film must always be regarded with a highly critical eye. (Mike Chopra-Gant 96-97) [SoundBite #1243]
77) History, by apprizing them [citizens] of the past, will enable them to judge of the future, it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views. (Thomas Jefferson, qtd. in Bennett, Children 160) [SoundBite #77]
78) Written history, after all, is the application of an aesthetic vision to a welter of facts; and both the weight and the vitality of an historical work depend on the quality of the vision. (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., qtd. in Commager 6) [SoundBite #67]
79) The knowledge of past events is the sovereign corrective of human nature. (Polybius of Megalopolis, c. 200 B.C.) [SoundBite #79]
80) Who are textbooks written for (and by)? Plainly, descendants of the Europeans. (James W. Loewen 35) [SoundBite #1268]
