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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

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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
Trying
History
Tedious
Going
Write
Hearts
People
Wells
General
Well
Reader
Feel
Quite
Feels
Written
Writing
Dies
Heart
Read

More quotes by David McCullough

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Freedom is found through the portals of our nation's libraries.
David McCullough
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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.
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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.
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History is not the story of heroes entirely. It is often the story of cruelty and injustice and shortsightedness. There are monsters, there is evil, there is betrayal. That's why people should read Shakespeare and Dickens as well as history ~~ they will find the best, the worst, the height of noble attainment and the depths of depravity.
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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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There are no people on earth in whom a spirit of enthusiastic zeal is so readily kindled, and burns so remarkably, as Americans
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There's no such thing as a foreseeable future.
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They must be cool but determined...he threatened instant death to any man who showed cowardice.
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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.
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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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Curiosity is what separates us from the cabbages. It's accelerative. The more we know, the more we want to know.
David McCullough
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We must not think of learning as only what happens in schools. It is an extended part of life. The most readily available resource for all of life is our public library system.
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The most interesting people are never perfect.
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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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A leader must look and act the part.
David McCullough
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Nobody ever lived in the past.
David McCullough
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Climb the mountain so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.
David McCullough
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Find something to do that you love because then the work itself is always the reward not the recompense. And if you love what you're doing you probably do better at it than doing something you don't love and therefore you'll be compensated appropriately.
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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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