Top 40 Quotes by Ken Burns

Jazz is a very accurate, curiously accurate accompaniment to 20th century America.

One of the things I really like about Ford's films is how there is always a focus on the way characters live, and not just the male heroes.

A jazz beat is a dynamic changing rhythm.

I enjoy total creative control right now. Nobody tells me to make it longer, shorter, better, sexier, more violent, whatever.

Like a layer on a pearl, you can't specifically identify the irritant, the moment of the irritant, but at the end of the day, you know you have a pearl.

Good history is a question of survival. Without any past, we will deprive ourselves of the defining impression of our being.

The stories from 1975 on are not finished and there is no resolve. I could spend 50 hours on the last 25 years of jazz and still not do it justice.

I have made all my films for my children with the exception of my first film because my oldest daughter wasn't born when I was making the film about the Brooklyn Bridge.

I never, ever want to apologize for a film. If it's bad I'll say it's my fault. And that's what I can say so far in all the films that I've done, that if you don't like it, it's entirely my fault.

I am passionately interested in understanding how my country works. And if you want to know about this thing called the United States of America you have to know about the Civil War.