David McCullough Quotes

Quotes about:

• Climb the mountain so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.

  David McCullough

  Wisdom, Famous Motivational, Mountain

  53 Copy quote

• History is not just about dates and quotations. And it's not just about politics, the military and social issues, though much of it of course is about that. It's about everything. It's about life history. It's human. And we have to see it that way. We have to teach it that way. We have to read it that way. It's about art, music, literature, money, science, love - the human experience.

  David McCullough

  Art, Military, Issues

  48 Copy quote

• Never assume that people in positions of responsibility are behaving responsibly.

  David McCullough

  Responsibility, People, Assuming

  39 Copy quote

• You can make the argument that there's no such thing as the past. Nobody lived in the past. They lived in the present. It is their present, not our present, and they don't know how it's going to come out. They weren't just like we are because they lived in that very different time. You can't understand them if you don't understand how they perceived reality.

  David McCullough

  Past, Reality, Different

  Interview with Bruce Cole, www.neh.gov.

  15 Copy quote

• I feel that history is in many ways the most important of all subjects because it is about everything and because it's about who we are and how we came to be the way we are.

  David McCullough

  Important, Who We Are, Way

  Source: belmontvision.com

  4 Copy quote

• We are all what we are, in large degree, because of others who have helped, coached, taught, counseled, who set a standard by example, who've taken an interest in our interests, opened doors, opened our minds, helped us see, who gave encouragement when we needed it, who reprimanded or prodded when we needed it, and at critical moments, inspired.

  David McCullough

  Encouragement, Taken, Doors

  28 Copy quote

• History is not the story of heroes entirely. It is often the story of cruelty and injustice and shortsightedness. There are monsters, there is evil, there is betrayal. That's why people should read Shakespeare and Dickens as well as history ~~ they will find the best, the worst, the height of noble attainment and the depths of depravity.

  David McCullough

  Betrayal, Book, Reading

  48 Copy quote

• 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

  Cost, Who We Are, Knows

  David McCullough (2007). “Brave Companions”, p.222, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

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

  David McCullough

  History, Who We Are, Way

  FaceBook post by David McCullough from Aug 13, 2012

  25 Copy quote

• You can't learn to play the piano without playing the piano, you can't learn to write without writing, and, in many ways, you can't learn to think without thinking. Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard.

  David McCullough

  Writing, Thinking, Play

  Source: www.neh.gov

  38 Copy quote

• A nation that forgets its past can function no better than an individual with amnesia.

  David McCullough

  Past, History, Forget

  14 Copy quote

• When the founders wrote about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they didn't mean longer vacations and more comfortable hammocks. They meant the pursuit of learning. The pursuit of improvement and excellence. In hard work is happiness.

  David McCullough

  Hard Work, Mean, Pursuit Of Happiness

  "What makes a great leader?". Interview with Scott Berinato, www.afr.com. February 8, 2013.

  8 Copy quote

• Love of learning will never let you down. You can have a quest for money, you can have a quest for power, you can have a quest for fame and they are sometimes gratifying and sometimes self-destructive. The love of learning is always gratifying and never self-destructive. The more educated, the more cultivated a society becomes, better off is everybody.

  David McCullough

  Self, Quests, Sometimes

  Source: belmontvision.com

  21 Copy quote

• Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love.

  David McCullough

  Love, Motivational, Success

  FaceBook post by David McCullough from Aug 17, 2012

  39 Copy quote

• 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

  Knowledge, Missing, Facts

  David McCullough (2011). “David McCullough American Presidents E-Book Box Set: John Adams, Mornings on Horseback, Truman, The Course of Human Events”, p.1749, Simon and Schuster

  3 Copy quote

• And read… read all the time… read as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect. Read as a nourishing staple of life.

  David McCullough

  Self, Principles, Matter

  David McCullough's Commencement Address at Wellesley High School in Wellesley, Massachusetts, www.thedailybeast.com. June 9, 2012.

  30 Copy quote

• History isn't just what happened, but what happened to whom and why and what would have been different if the cast of characters had been different.

  David McCullough

  Character, Different, Casts

  Source: belmontvision.com

  6 Copy quote

• I think the public library system is one of the most amazing American institutions. Free for everybody. If you ever get the blues about the status of American culture there are still more public libraries than there are McDonald's. During the worst of the Depression not one public library closed their doors.

  David McCullough

  Thinking, Mcdonalds, Doors

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

  15 Copy quote

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

  David McCullough

  Past, Names

  David McCullough (2007). “Brave Companions”, p.14, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

• Books can change your life. Some of the most influential people in our lives are characters we meet in books.

  David McCullough

  Book, Character, People

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

  25 Copy quote

• On Christmas morning when I was a child, my mother would leave a book wrapped at the foot of the bed, which was a hint that Santa had come. It was also her way of keeping us in bed a little longer before we went downstairs. So I've always associated books with happiness and gifts. And they are. I can't get enough of them.

  David McCullough

  Mother, Morning, Children

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

  6 Copy quote

• Develop and protect a moral sensibility and demonstrate the character to apply it. Dream big. Work hard. Think for yourself. Love everything you love, everyone you love, with all your might. And do so, please, with a sense of urgency, for every tick of the clock subtracts from fewer and fewer...

  David McCullough

  Dream, Hard Work, Character

  David McCullough's Commencement Address at Wellesley High School in Wellesley, Massachusetts, www.thedailybeast.com. June 9, 2012.

  13 Copy quote

• Why limit yourself to the experience of your own relatively brief time on earth, according to your biological clock, when the whole realm of the human experience reaching back infinitely far is available to you?

  David McCullough

  Time On Earth, Limits, Clock

  Source: belmontvision.com

  17 Copy quote

• 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.

  David McCullough

  Art, Responsibility, Alive

  FaceBook post by David McCullough from Aug 06, 2012

  78 Copy quote

• 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

  Teacher, Degrees, Generations

  Source: www.neh.gov

  19 Copy quote

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