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You have overburdened your argument with ostentatious erudition.

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
Ostentatious
Erudition
Argument
Overburdened
Abigail

More quotes by 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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First of all, you can make the argument that there's no such thing as the past. Nobody lived in the past.
David McCullough
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My next book is also set in the eighteenth century. It's about the Revolution, with the focus on the year 1776. It's about Washington and the army and the war. It's the nadir, the low point of the United States of America.
David McCullough
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I am adamant that we must not cut back on funding of the teaching of the arts in the schools: music, painting, theater, dance, all of it. The great thing about the arts is that the only way you learn how to do it is by doing it.
David McCullough
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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
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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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The truth isn't just the facts. You can have all the facts imaginable and miss the truth, just as you can have facts missing or some wrong, and reach the larger truth.
David McCullough
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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
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You've got to marinate your head, in that time and culture. You've got to become them. (Speaking about researching, and reading, and immersing yourself in History)
David McCullough
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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.
David McCullough
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I just thank my father and mother, my lucky stars, that I had the advantage of an education in the humanities.
David McCullough
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May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.
David McCullough
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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
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I feel that what I do is a calling. I would pay to do what I do if I had to. I will never live long enough to do the work I want to do: the books I would like to write, the ideas I would like to explore.
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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I love Dickens. I love the way he sets a scene.
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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You can't love what you don't know much about. You can't convince, stimulate, hold the attention, teach, if you don't know what you're talking about.
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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We all know the old expression, I'll work my thoughts out on paper. There's something about the pen that focuses the brain in a way that nothing else does. That is why we must have more writing in the schools, more writing in all subjects, not just in English classes.
David McCullough