Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

David McCullough
Age: 91
Born: 1933
Born: July 7
Author
Biographer
Historian
Journalist
Writer
Pittsburg
Pennsylvania
David Gaub McCullough
David G. McCullough
Knowledge
Talking
Much
Love
Stimulate
Convince
Hold
Teach
Attention

More quotes by David McCullough

Image
Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives. - John Adams
David McCullough
Image
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
Image
Read. Read. Read. Read. Read great books. Read poetry, history, biography. Read the novels that have stood the test of time. And read closely.
David McCullough
Image
I feel that history is in many ways the most important of all subjects because it is about everything and because it's about who we are and how we came to be the way we are.
David McCullough
Image
My strong feeling is that we must learn more about how we learn. I'm convinced that we learn by struggling to find the solution to a problem on our own with some guidance, but getting in and getting our hands dirty and working it.
David McCullough
Image
Climb the mountain so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.
David McCullough
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
People often ask me if I'm working on a book. That's not how I feel. I feel like I work in a book. It's like putting myself under a spell. And this spell, if you will, is so real to me that if I have to leave my work for a few days, I have to work myself back into the spell when I come back. It's almost like hypnosis.
David McCullough
Image
Never assume that people in positions of responsibility are behaving responsibly.
David McCullough
Image
Freedom is found through the portals of our nation's libraries.
David McCullough
Image
I just thank my father and mother, my lucky stars, that I had the advantage of an education in the humanities.
David McCullough
Image
I love Dickens. I love the way he sets a scene.
David McCullough
Image
The past after all is only another name for someone else's present.
David McCullough
Image
There are no people on earth in whom a spirit of enthusiastic zeal is so readily kindled, and burns so remarkably, as Americans
David McCullough
Image
Courage is contagious. If a leader shows courage, others get the idea.
David McCullough
Image
It would be the most crucial day of the entire war.
David McCullough
Image
Morality only is eternal. All the rest is balloon and bubble from the cradle to the grave.
David McCullough
Image
The most interesting people are never perfect.
David McCullough