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The more we see the founders as humans the more we can understand them.

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
Founders
Understand
Humans

More quotes by David McCullough

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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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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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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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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 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
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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
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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 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
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The most interesting people are never 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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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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Morality only is eternal. All the rest is balloon and bubble from the cradle to the grave.
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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Courage is contagious. If a leader shows courage, others get the idea.
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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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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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.
David McCullough
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It would be the most crucial day of the entire war.
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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A leader must look and act the part.
David McCullough