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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

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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
Enthusiastic
Americans
Spirit
Earth
Kindled
People
Remarkably
Readily
Burns
Zeal

More quotes by David McCullough

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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
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Every book is a new journey. I never felt I was an expert on a subject as I embarked on a project.
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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America faces an enemy who believes in enforced ignorance. And all that we stand for is the open mind, the generous spirit, the ideal of tolerance, freedom, education, opportunity.
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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To this noble end the delegates had pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.
David McCullough
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There is only one person who can measure your success. That person is you.
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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The past after all is only another name for someone else's present.
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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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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Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard.
David McCullough
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Napoleon could never imagine that some people loved their country as much as he loved his own.
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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The first of all qualities of a general is courage.
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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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
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It was an utterly phenomenal achievement.
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