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

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
Lives
Country
Adams
Never
Obligations
Patriotic
Patriotism
Obligation
Cease
John

More quotes by David McCullough

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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.
David McCullough
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Your education never stops and college is just the beginning. You come out of college with a huge advantage in that you've ideally and more times than not you've come out with a love of learning and that's what matters above all.
David McCullough
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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
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Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard.
David McCullough
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I want people to see that all-important time in a different way-in the way it was. For of a number of reasons, including the absence of photographs, we tend to see the men and women of the Revolution as not quite real. And we have far too little sense of what they suffered.
David McCullough
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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
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You can't be a full participant in our democracy if you don't know our history.
David McCullough
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The past after all is only another name for someone else's present.
David McCullough
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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
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I think it is one of the most extraordinary elections, a turning point for our country and for the world. That remarkable young man [Barack Obama] has kept his demeanor, kept his temperament and has shown a power to inspire. I see what energy that he has inspired among the young. Well, it inspires us old goats too.
David McCullough
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Washington was a man of exceptional, almost excessive self-command, rarely permitting himself any show of discouragement or despair.
David McCullough
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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
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Never assume that people in positions of responsibility are behaving responsibly.
David McCullough
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Nothing ever invented provides such sustenance, such infinite reward for time spent, as a good book.
David McCullough
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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
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I think that we need history as much as we need bread or water or love.
David McCullough
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Courage is contagious. If a leader shows courage, others get the idea.
David McCullough
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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
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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
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First of all, you can make the argument that there's no such thing as the past. Nobody lived in the past.
David McCullough