David McCullough Quotes

24 Sourced Quotes

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

David McCullough
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
Read somewhat in the English poets every day. You will find them elegant, entertaining and constructive companions through your whole life.

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

David McCullough
We are raising a generation of young Americans who are, to a very large degree, historically illiterate. It's not their faults. There's no problem about enlisting their interest in history. None. The problem is the teachers so often have no history in their background.

David McCullough
I lament the want of a liberal education. I feel the mist of ignorance to surround me - Nathanael Greene

David McCullough
I feel that as much as I enjoy loafing, there is something higher for which to live.

David McCullough
It was a day and age that saw no reason why one could not learn whatever was required - learn vitally anything - by the close study of books.

David McCullough
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."

David McCullough
Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives. - John Adams

David McCullough
As time would prove, he had written one of the great, enduring documents of the American Revolution. The constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is the oldest functioning written constitution in the world.

David McCullough
The past after all is only another name for someone else's present.

David McCullough
So, it was done, the break was made, in words at least: on July 2, 1776, in Philadelphia, the American colonies declared independence. If not all thirteen clocks had struck as one, twelve had, and with the other silent, the effect was the same.

David McCullough
To this noble end the delegates had pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

David McCullough
The preparations were elaborate and mammoth in scale, and Washington threw himself into the effort, demanding that not an hour be lost.

David McCullough
The evil of technology was not technology itself, Lindbergh came to see after the war, not in airplanes or the myriad contrivances of modern technical ingenuity, but in the extent to which they can distance us from our better moral nature, or sense of personal accountability.

David McCullough
Washington had performed his role to perfection. It was no enough that a leader look the part; by Washington's rules, he must know how to act it with self-command and precision.

David McCullough
You've got to marinate your head, in that time and culture. You've got to become them.

David McCullough
He had kept his head, kept his health and his strength, bearing up under a weight of work and worry that only a few could have carried.

David McCullough
The truth isn't just the facts. You can have all the facts imaginable and miss the truth, just as you can have facts missing or some wrong, and reach the larger truth.

David McCullough
Washington was a man of exceptional, almost excessive self-command, rarely permitting himself any show of discouragement or despair.

David McCullough
How can we know who we are and where we are going if we don't know anything about where we have come from and what we have been through, the courage shown, the costs paid, to be where we are?

David McCullough
In fact, it was the largest expeditionary force of the 18th century. The largest, most powerful force ever set forth from Britain or any nation.

David McCullough
Had proven himself a leader of remarkable ability, a man not only of enterprising ideas, but with the staying power to carry them out.

David McCullough