Ken Burns said this quote

The black-white rift stands at the very center of American history. It is the great challenge to which all our deepest aspirations to freedom must rise. If we forget that--if we forget the great stain of slavery that stands at the heart of our country, our history, our experiment--we forget who we are, and we make the great rift deeper and wider.

~ Ken Burns

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.

~ Ken Burns

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.

~ Ken Burns

I subscribe to William Faulkner's' view that history is not just about what we were before but who we are now.

~ Ken Burns