Quote

The most interesting people are never perfect.

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
Never
People
Interesting
Perfect

More quotes by 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
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 fulfilling life, the distinctive life, the relevant life, is an achievement... To do whatever you do for no reason other than you love it and believe in its importance.
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
How can we know who we are and where we are going if we don't know anything about where we have come from and what we have been through, the courage shown, the costs paid, to be where we are?
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
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
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
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
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
I love Dickens. I love the way he sets a scene.
David McCullough
Image
Climb the mountain so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.
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
It was an utterly phenomenal achievement.
David McCullough
Image
People are so helpful. People will stop what they're doing to show you something, to walk with you through a section of the town, or explain how a suspension bridge really works.
David McCullough
Image
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
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
Napoleon could never imagine that some people loved their country as much as he loved his own.
David McCullough
Image
There's no such thing as a foreseeable future.
David McCullough