David McCullough Quotes (56 Quotes)

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

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

The longer I live, the more I read, the more patiently I think and the more anxiously I inquire, the less I seem to know...do justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly. This is enough.

The source of our suffering has been our timidity. We have been afraid to think....Let us dare to read, think, speak, write.

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.

Every line from you exhilarates my spirits and gives me a glow of pleasure, but your kind congratulations are solid comfort to my heart. The little strength of mind and the considerable strenght of body that I once possessed appear to be all gone, but while I breathe I shall be your friend.

Fortunately, Washington chose not to see it that way, and he did what you sometimes do when all hope is gone. He decided to attack.

Reading history is good for all of us, he says, not surprisingly, perhaps, but his rationale is a fresh, somewhat bracing thought If you know history, you know that there is no such thing as a self-made man or self-made woman. We are shaped by people we have never met. Yes, reading history will make you a better citizen and more appreciative of the law, and of freedom, and of how the economy works or doesn't work, but it is also an immense pleasurethe way art is, or music is, or poetry is. And it's never stale.

I would pay to do what I do if I had to.

I just thank my father and mother, my lucky stars, that I had the advantage of an education in the humanities.

May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.

First of all, you can make the argument that there's no such thing as the past. Nobody lived in the past.

When I began, I thought that the way one should work was to do all the research and then write the book.

Once I discovered the endless fascination of doing the research and of doing the writing, I knew I had found what I wanted to do in my life.

I'm drawn particularly to stories that evolve out of the character of the protagonist.

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.

If they want to make us park in the stadium lots, then they should make the parking affordable. But this is really the right time to do this. Strategically, this is a good move because the team is getting better, and more fans might be showing up.

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

I work very hard on the writing, writing and rewriting and trying to weed out the lumber.

We can know a lot by (Adams') friends and his loyalty to them, ... In the face of political disagreements and eccentricities, it's an inspiring example of how much friends can mean in life.

What started me writing history happened because of some curiosity that I had about some photographs I'd seen in the Library of Congress.

The pull, the attraction of history, is in our human nature. What makes us tick Why do we do what we do How much is luck the deciding factor

The Great Bridge, The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge

To go back and read Swift and Defoe and Samuel Johnson and Smollett and Pope - all those people we had to read in college English courses - to read them now is to have one of the infinite pleasures in life.

The title always comes last. What I really work hard on is the beginning. Where do you begin In what tone do you begin I almost have to have a scene in my mind.

With the Truman book, I wrote the entire account of his experiences in World War I before going over to Europe to follow his tracks in the war. When I got there, there was a certain satisfaction in finding I had it right - it does look like that.

People ask me when I start one of these projects, what is your theme I havent the faintest idea. Thats why youre writing the book, it seems to me, to find out. To me, its a journey. Its an adventure. Its traveling in a country youve never been in and everything is going to be new, and because of that, vivid. And dont make up your mind too soon. Let it be an experience.

His only intention, as he said, was to do nothing accept no position, lend his name to no organization or transaction that would exploit or 'commercialize' the prestige and dignity of the office of the President.

I love all sides of the work but that doesn't mean it isn't hard.

I love Dickens. I love the way he sets a scene.

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

People are so helpful. People will stop what they're doing to show you something, to walk with you through a section of the town, or explain how a suspension bridge really works.

There's an awful temptation to just keep on researching. There comes a point where you just have to stop, and start writing.

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.

It was like the parting of the seas.

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.

dropping the key in the box and slipping away in the night.

was the biggest news event in America since the assassination of Lincoln in 1865.

It was a small battle, but it was very important, because we won for the first time, ... It had a huge psychological effect. . . . That was its importance. They sensed it was possible, possible - not guaranteed, nothing was guaranteed - that we might prevail.

I had been writing for about twelve years. I knew pretty well how you could find things out, but I had never been trained in an academic way how to go about the research.

I'm very aware how many distractions the reader has in life today, how many good reasons there are to put the book down.

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

I came across a lot of material I wanted to use for the Adams book and wasn't able to,

Every book is a new journey. I never felt I was an expert on a subject as I embarked on a project.

I could not do what I do without the kindness, consideration, resourcefulness and work of librarians, particularly in public libraries.

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.

It could be argued that the Johnstown flood of 1889 wasn't a natural disaster at all, but the inevitable consequence of humans thinking they could control nature. Whatever the cause, the day after a dam burst, unleashing 20 million tons of water on the residents of Johnstown, Pa., and its neighboring boroughs, the area looked like a vast sea of muck and rubble and filthy water, ... The Johnstown Flood.

In time I began to understand that it's when you start writing that you really find out what you don't know and need to know.

The Johnstown flood was not an act of God or nature. It was brought by human failure, human shortsightedness and selfishness.

If something didn't work, he'd try something else. If something else didn't work, he'd try something else again. Over and over, and always learning from his mistakes. Learning the job on the job, at a terrible cost, to be sure.