American - Critic | September 16, 1950 -
My goal is to get everybody in America to do their family tree.
Henry Louis Gates
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All historians generalize from particulars. And often, if you look at a historian's footnotes, the number of examples of specific cases is very, very small.
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If you share a common ancestor with somebody, you're related to them. It doesn't mean that you're going to invite them to the family reunion, but it means that you share DNA.
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Remember, I have a Ph.D. in English literature.
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Because Lincoln is so closely identified with what it is to be American, everyone wants to claim him, to rewrite his story to satisfy their own particular needs.
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Patriotism is best exemplified through auto-critique.
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I have no plans to slow down.
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I'm a tech geek.
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Suffering does not necessarily ennoble you.
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Because Lincoln is so closely identified with what it is to be American, everyone wants to claim him, to rewrite his story to satisfy their own particular needs. For my own people, it was important to imagine him as the Great Emancipator, the Moses who led us out of slavery.
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Lincoln would love the fact that Obama is such a great conciliator, trying to transcend ideology.
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People don't realize what a brilliant politician Lincoln was. Looking back, we want to ascribe a level of providence to his every decision but he was a cunning and calculating politician; from the cultivation of his image as a hayseed from Illinois, to his ability to keep this country together under dire circumstances.
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