David McCullough Quotes

Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air and behold the view. Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

My wife, the star I steer by.

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

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

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

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

Spotting talent is one of the essential elements of great leadership.

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

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

Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard.

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

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.

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.

If everyone is special, then no one is. If everyone gets a trophy, trophies become meaningless.

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

If you get down about the state of American culture, just remember there are still more public libraries in this country than there are McDonalds.

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.

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

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

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

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.

We must not think of learning as only what happens in schools. It is an extended part of life. The most readily available resource for all of life is our public library system.

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

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.

The first of all qualities of a general is courage.

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.

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

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.

The great thing about the arts is that you can only learn to do it by doing it.

To shut yourself from history is to shut yourself off from say music or painting or the theatre, literature for the rest of your life. It would be to cheat yourself of the pleasures of life.

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

Read. Read. Read. Read. Read great books. Read poetry, history, biography. Read the novels that have stood the test of time. And read closely.

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

Curiosity is what separates us from the cabbages. It's accelerative. The more we know, the more we want to know.

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.

They must be cool but determined...he threatened instant death to any man who showed cowardice.

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?

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

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

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

Home is really where education does begin.

Nobody ever lived in the past.

However little television you watch, watch less.