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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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David McCullough
Age: 91
Born: 1933
Born: July 7
Author
Biographer
Historian
Journalist
Writer
Pittsburg
Pennsylvania
David Gaub McCullough
David G. McCullough
Characters
Happened
History
Character
Different
Would
Cast
Casts

More quotes by 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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When a friend of Abigail and John Adams was killed at Bunker Hill, Abigail's response was to write a letter to her husband and include these words, My bursting heart must find vent at my pen.
David McCullough
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Nobody ever lived in the past.
David McCullough
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A leader must look and act the part.
David McCullough
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There is a human longing to go back to other times. We all know how when we were children we asked our parents, What was it like when you were a kid? I think it probably has something to do with our survival as a species.
David McCullough
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The more we see the founders as humans the more we can understand them.
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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Morality only is eternal. All the rest is balloon and bubble from the cradle to the grave.
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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I love Dickens. I love the way he sets a scene.
David McCullough
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I am adamant that we must not cut back on funding of the teaching of the arts in the schools: music, painting, theater, dance, all of it. The great thing about the arts is that the only way you learn how to do it is by doing it.
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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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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There is only one person who can measure your success. That person is you.
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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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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Home is really where education does begin.
David McCullough
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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
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Freedom is found through the portals of our nation's libraries.
David McCullough
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I lament the want of a liberal education. I feel the mist of ignorance to surround me - Nathanael Greene
David McCullough