Latest David McCullough Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• Home is really where education does begin.

  David McCullough

  Home, Doe

• We all know the old expression, "I'll work my thoughts out on paper." There's something about the pen that focuses the brain in a way that nothing else does. That is why we must have more writing in the schools, more writing in all subjects, not just in English classes.

  David McCullough

  Writing, School, Expression

  Source: www.neh.gov

• The talent, including the talent for history - and I do think there are people who just have a talent for it, the way you have a talent for public speaking or music or whatever - it shouldn't be allowed to lie dormant. It should be brought alive.

  David McCullough

  Lying, Thinking, People

  Source: www.neh.gov

• 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

• I am adamant that we must not cut back on funding of the teaching of the arts in the schools: music, painting, theater, dance, all of it. The great thing about the arts is that the only way you learn how to do it is by doing it.

  David McCullough

  Art, Teaching, School

  Source: www.neh.gov

• My strong feeling is that we must learn more about how we learn. I'm convinced that we learn by struggling to find the solution to a problem on our own with some guidance, but getting in and getting our hands dirty and working it.

  David McCullough

  Strong, Dirty, Struggle

  Source: www.neh.gov

• I'm absolutely positive it's in our human nature to want to know about the past. The two most popular movies of all time, while not historically accurate, are about core historic events: 'Gone With the Wind' and 'Titanic.'

  David McCullough

  Past, Wind, Two

  Source: www.neh.gov

• There is a human longing to go back to other times. We all know how when we were children we asked our parents, "What was it like when you were a kid?" I think it probably has something to do with our survival as a species.

  David McCullough

  Children, Kids, Thinking

  Source: www.neh.gov

• Little children can learn anything, just as they can learn a foreign language. The mind is so absorbent then. There ought to be a real program to educate teachers who want to teach grade school children about history.

  David McCullough

  Teacher, Children, Real

  Source: www.neh.gov

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

  David McCullough

  Poet, Companion, Whole Life

  David McCullough (2011). “David McCullough American History E-book Box Set: John Adams, 1776, Truman, The Course of Human Events”, p.144, Simon and Schuster

• 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.

  David McCullough

  Regret, Latin, People

  Source: www.neh.gov

• You have to have wisdom and knowledge as well as virtue to preserve your rights and liberties.

  David McCullough

  Rights, Liberty, Virtue

  Source: www.neh.gov

• America faces an enemy who believes in enforced ignorance. And all that we stand for is the open mind, the generous spirit, the ideal of tolerance, freedom, education, opportunity.

  David McCullough

  Believe, Ignorance, Opportunity

  Source: www.neh.gov

• We should draw on our story, we should draw on our history. If we don't know who we are, if we don't know how we became what we are, we're going to start suffering from all the obvious detrimental effects of amnesia.

  David McCullough

  Suffering, Stories, Who We Are

  Source: www.neh.gov

• Since September 11, it seems to me that never in our lifetime, except possibly in the early stages of World War II, has it been clearer that we have as a source of strength, a source of direction, a source of inspiration - our story.

  David McCullough

  War, Inspiration, September 11

  Source: www.neh.gov

• Yes, this is a dangerous time. Yes, this is a time full of shadows and fear. But we have been through worse before and we have faced more difficult days before. We have shown courage and determination, and skillful and inventive and courageous and committed responses to crisis before.

  David McCullough

  Determination, Shadow, Courageous

  Source: www.neh.gov

• If the attitude of the teacher toward the material is positive, enthusiastic, committed and excited, the students get that. If the teacher is bored, students get that and they get bored, quickly, instinctively.

  David McCullough

  Teacher, Attitude, Bored

  Source: www.neh.gov

• 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

• If we think back through our own lives, the subjects that you liked best in school almost certainly were taught by the teachers you liked best. And the teacher you liked best was the teacher who cared about the subject she taught.

  David McCullough

  Teacher, School, Thinking

  Source: www.neh.gov

• I think it's best to pick a biographical subject who lives to a ripe old age. Older people tend to relax and speak their minds. They're dropping some of the masks that they've been wearing. There's a candor.

  David McCullough

  Thinking, People, Mind

  Source: www.neh.gov

• There are innumerable writing problems in an extended work. One book took a little more than six years. You, the writer, change in six years. The life around you changes. Your family changes. They grow up. They move away. The world is changing. You're also learning more about the subject. By the time you're writing the last chapters of the book, you know much more than you did when you started at the beginning.

  David McCullough

  Growing Up, Moving, Book

  Source: www.neh.gov

• I could not do what I do without the kindness, consideration, resourcefulness and work of librarians, particularly in public libraries... What started me writing history happened because of some curiosity that I had about some photographs I'd seen in the Library of Congress.

  David McCullough

  Kindness, Writing, Curiosity

  Source: www.neh.gov

• I feel that what I do is a calling. I would pay to do what I do if I had to. I will never live long enough to do the work I want to do: the books I would like to write, the ideas I would like to explore.

  David McCullough

  Book, Writing, Ideas

  Source: www.neh.gov

• There are people who are trying to write history for the general reader who can be quite tedious. That said, I do feel in my heart of hearts that if history isn't well written, it isn't going to be read, and if it isn't read it's going to die.

  David McCullough

  Writing, Heart, People

  Source: www.neh.gov

• Unlike the people you see in Mathew Brady's photographs from the Civil War, the men and women of the Revolution seem more like characters in a costume pageant. And it's a pageant in which the performers are all handsome as stage actors, with uniforms and dress that are always costume perfect.

  David McCullough

  War, Character, Men

  Interview, www.bookreporter.com. June 2005.