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History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.
David McCullough
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David McCullough
Age: 91
Born: 1933
Born: July 7
Author
Biographer
Historian
Journalist
Writer
Pittsburg
Pennsylvania
David Gaub McCullough
David G. McCullough
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History
Way
Perilous
Navigation
Guide
Guides
Insight
More quotes by David McCullough
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
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.
David McCullough
Find something to do that you love because then the work itself is always the reward not the recompense. And if you love what you're doing you probably do better at it than doing something you don't love and therefore you'll be compensated appropriately.
David McCullough
There's no such thing as a foreseeable future.
David McCullough
I don't pick my presidents because they were great presidents. I'm not much interested in ranking presidents and who is the best and who is the worst. I am much more inclined to be interested in them if they had an interesting life and if they were a complete person - and by that I mean they also had flaws and failings.
David McCullough
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.
David McCullough
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
I think that a good education ought to be in part the idea that ease and joy are not synonymous. Some of the most fulfilling pleasures of life are to be found in work - found in work you love to do, work you want to do, work that makes you want to get out of bed in the morning.
David McCullough
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
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
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
Home is really where education does begin.
David McCullough
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.
David McCullough
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
You have overburdened your argument with ostentatious erudition.
David McCullough
I lament the want of a liberal education. I feel the mist of ignorance to surround me - Nathanael Greene
David McCullough
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
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
You can't be a full participant in our democracy if you don't know our history.
David McCullough
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