DMDavid McCullough

48 collected words

David McCullough

Dates not recorded

Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

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Quotations and sayings

01Undated

To me, history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me, it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is."; NEH 2003 Jefferson Lecturer interview profile]

David McCullough / quote

02Undated

Morality only is eternal. All the rest is balloon and bubble from the cradle to the grave.

David McCullough / quote

03Undated

Let the children have their night of fun and laughter. Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play. Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us, resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world." Winston Churchill Christmas Eve Message, 1941 as printed in "In the Dark Streets Shineth.

David McCullough / quote

04Undated

Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard.", July/Aug. 2002, Vol. 23/No. 4)

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05Undated

No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read.", NEH Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities 2003)

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06Undated

History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.

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07Undated

Any nation that expects to be ignorant and free," Jefferson said, "expects what never was and never will be." And if the gap between the educated and the uneducated in America continues to grow as it is in our time, as fast as or faster than the gap between the rich and the poor, the gap between the educated and the uneducated is going to be of greater consequence and the more serious threat to our way of life. We must not, by any means, misunderstand that.

David McCullough / quote

08Undated

The more Adams thought about the future of his country, the more convinced he became that it rested on education. Before any great things are accomplished, he wrote to a correspondent, a memorable change must be made in the system of education and knowledge must become so general as to raise the lower ranks of society nearer to the higher. The education of a nation instead of being confined to a few schools and universities for the instruction of the few, must become the national care and expense for the formation of the many.

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09Undated

Remove yourself, sir!

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10Undated

Nothing ever invented provides such sustenance, such infinite reward for time spent, as a good book.

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11Undated

Indeed, bribery, favoritism, and corruption in a great variety of forms were rampant not only in politics, but in all levels of society.

David McCullough / quote

12Undated

When a friend of Abigail and John Adams was killed at Bunker Hill, Abigail's response was to write a letter to her husband and include these words, "My bursting heart must find vent at my pen.

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13Undated

In an exhibition wherein paintings of nudes were commonplace, that of Madame Gautreau in her black evening dress was considered scandalously erotic. -from The Greater Journey

David McCullough / quote

14Undated

To me, history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me, it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or musi

David McCullough / quote

15Undated

No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to

David McCullough / quote

16Undated

You can't be a full participant in our democracy if you don't know our history.

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17Undated

You've got to marinate your head, in that time and culture.You've got to become them."(Speaking about researching, and reading, and immersing yourself in History)

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18Undated

marinate your mind

David McCullough / quote

19Undated

To his own children he was at once the ultimate voice of authority and, when time allowed, their most exuberant companion. He never fired their imaginations or made them laugh as their mother could, but he was unfailingly interested in them, sympathetic, confiding, entering into their lives in ways few fathers ever do. It was a though he was in league with them.

David McCullough / quote

20Undated

[While writing history], I've kept the most interesting company imaginable with people long gone. Some I've come to know better than many I know in real life, since in real life we don't get to read other people's mail.

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21Undated

Measurements "are never enough. The artist's eye and desire to breathe life into the subject must be the deciding factors.

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22Undated

Those for whom things came easily usually made less of an effort, not more.

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23Undated

One of the regrets of my life is that I did not study Latin. I'm absolutely convinced, the more I understand these eighteenth century people, that it was that grounding in Greek and Latin that gave them their sense of the classic virtues: the classic ideals of honor, virtue, the good society, and their historic examples of what they could try to live up to.

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24Undated

...it is always easier to deal with things than with men, and no one can direct his life entirely as he would choose. -Wilbur Wright, 1911

David McCullough / quote