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

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
Contagious
Courage
Leader
Idea
Others
Shows
Ideas

More quotes by 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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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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The past after all is only another name for someone else's present.
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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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.
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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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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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
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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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Curiosity is what separates us from the cabbages. It's accelerative. The more we know, the more we want to know.
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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Nobody ever lived in the past.
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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History is not the story of heroes entirely. It is often the story of cruelty and injustice and shortsightedness. There are monsters, there is evil, there is betrayal. That's why people should read Shakespeare and Dickens as well as history ~~ they will find the best, the worst, the height of noble attainment and the depths of depravity.
David McCullough
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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
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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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I think that we need history as much as we need bread or water or love.
David McCullough
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It would be the most crucial day of the entire war.
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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May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.
David McCullough