David McCullough Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• 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

  26 Copy quote

• Real success is finding your life work in the work that you love. That's it. Don't worry about making a living, don't worry about popularity or fame. Make what you do ... count more than what you own.

  David McCullough

  Real, Worry, Popularity

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• My shorthand answer is that I try to write the kind of book that I would like to read. If I can make it clear and interesting and compelling to me, then I hope maybe it will be for the reader.

  David McCullough

  Book, Writing, Interesting

  Interview with Bruce Cole, www.neh.gov. May/June 2003.

  9 Copy quote

• Read. Read every chance you get. Read to keep growing. Read history. Read poetry. Read for pure enjoyment. Read a book called Life on a Little Known Planet. It's about insects. It will make you feel better.

  David McCullough

  Reading, Book, Feel Better

  7 Copy quote

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

  David McCullough

  Book, Rewards, Infinite

  FaceBook post by David McCullough from Aug 20, 2012

  14 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

  18 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

  16 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

  7 Copy quote

• Exercise free will and creative, independent thought not for the satisfactions they will bring you, but for the good they will do others, the rest of the 6.8 billion–and those who will follow them. And then you too will discover the great and curious truth of the human experience is that selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself. The sweetest joys of life, then, come only with the recognition that you’re not special. Because everyone is.

  David McCullough

  Independent, Exercise, Creative

  "Commencement speaker blasts students". www.washingtonpost.com. June 8, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

• The year 1776, celebrated as the birth year of the nation and for the signing of the Declaration of Independence, was for those who carried the fight for independence forward a year of all-too-few victories, of sustained suffering, disease, hunger, desertion, cowardice, disillusionment, defeat, terrible discouragement, and fear, as they would never forget, but also of phenomenal courage and bedrock devotion to country, and that, too they would never forget.

  David McCullough

  Country, Fighting, Years

  David McCullough (2011). “David McCullough American History E-book Box Set: John Adams, 1776, Truman, The Course of Human Events”, p.643, Simon and Schuster

  11 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

  20 Copy quote

• I love to go to the places where things happen. I like to walk the walk and see how the light falls and what winter feels like.

  David McCullough

  Fall, Winter, Light

  Source: www.neh.gov

  4 Copy quote

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

  David McCullough

  Democracy, Participants, Knows

  FaceBook post by David McCullough from Aug 29, 2012

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Husband, Grief, Writing

  11 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.

  14 Copy quote

• My wife, the star I steer by.

  David McCullough

  Marriage, Stars, Wife

  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

  79 Copy quote

• The fulfilling life, the distinctive life, the relevant life, is an achievement... To do whatever you do for no reason other than you love it and believe in its importance.

  David McCullough

  Believe, Achievement, Life Is

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

  13 Copy quote

• A leader must look and act the part.

  David McCullough

  Leader, Looks

  David McCullough (2005). “Seventeen Seventy-six”, p.71, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• Courage is contagious. If a leader shows courage, others get the idea.

  David McCullough

  Ideas, Leader, Contagious

  16 Copy quote

• 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

  14 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

  7 Copy quote

• Each generation, we peel back biases that have blinded those before us. The more we know about the past enables us to ask richer and more provocative questions about who we are today.

  David McCullough

  Past, Generations, Who We Are

  4 Copy quote

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