Famous Quotes

"I think we too often make choices based on the safety of cynicism, and what we're lead to is a life not fully lived. Cynicism is fear, and it's worse than fear - it's active disengagement."

Ken Burns on Fear

More quotes about Fear

• "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."

  John F. Kennedy on Fear

• "Pick the day. Enjoy it - to the hilt. The day as it comes. People as they come... The past, I think, has helped me appreciate the present - and I don't want to spoil any of it by fretting about the future."

  Audrey Hepburn on Fear

• "I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death."

  Thomas Paine on Fear

• "We fear violence less than our own feelings. Personal, private, solitary pain is more terrifying than what anyone else can inflict."

  Jim Morrison on Fear

• "What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it."

  Jiddu Krishnamurti on Fear

More quotes by Ken Burns

• "I have made a film about jazz that tries to look through jazz to see what it tells us about who we are as a people. I think that jazz is a spectacularly accurate model of democracy and a kind of look into our redemptive future possibilities."

• "History is malleable. A new cache of diaries can shed new light, and archeological evidence can challenge our popular assumptions."

• "You can learn as much about the history from reading about the present as you can vice versa, that is learning about the present through history, which is what I do for a living."

• "I began to feel that the drama of the truth that is in the moment and in the past is richer and more interesting than the drama of Hollywood movies. So I began looking at documentary films."

• "I record all of my music with authentic instruments in a studio before we start editing, doing many, many versions. The music shapes the film as we edit so it has an organic relationship to the content."