Quote

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

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
Cast
Casts
Characters
Happened
History
Character
Different
Would

More quotes by David McCullough

Image
Curiosity is what separates us from the cabbages. It's accelerative. The more we know, the more we want to know.
David McCullough
Image
They must be cool but determined...he threatened instant death to any man who showed cowardice.
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
History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.
David McCullough
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
To this noble end the delegates had pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.
David McCullough
Image
It would be the most crucial day of the entire war.
David McCullough
Image
I think that a good education ought to be in part the idea that ease and joy are not synonymous. Some of the most fulfilling pleasures of life are to be found in work - found in work you love to do, work you want to do, work that makes you want to get out of bed in the morning.
David McCullough
Image
My wife, the star I steer by.
David McCullough
Image
First of all, you can make the argument that there's no such thing as the past. Nobody lived in the past.
David McCullough
Image
Nothing ever invented provides such sustenance, such infinite reward for time spent, as a good book.
David McCullough
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
A leader must look and act the part.
David McCullough
Image
I think it is one of the most extraordinary elections, a turning point for our country and for the world. That remarkable young man [Barack Obama] has kept his demeanor, kept his temperament and has shown a power to inspire. I see what energy that he has inspired among the young. Well, it inspires us old goats too.
David McCullough
Image
It was an utterly phenomenal achievement.
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