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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
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Historian
Journalist
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Pittsburg
Pennsylvania
David Gaub McCullough
David G. McCullough
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Quite
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Dies
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More quotes by 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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We are raising a generation of young Americans who are, to a very large degree, historically illiterate. It's not their faults. There's no problem about enlisting their interest in history. None. The problem is the teachers so often have no history in their background.
David McCullough
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Washington was a man of exceptional, almost excessive self-command, rarely permitting himself any show of discouragement or despair.
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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My wife, the star I steer by.
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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May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.
David McCullough
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It would be the most crucial day of the entire war.
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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Nothing ever invented provides such sustenance, such infinite reward for time spent, as a good book.
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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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
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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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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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A leader must look and act the part.
David McCullough
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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
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You can't love what you don't know much about. You can't convince, stimulate, hold the attention, teach, if you don't know what you're talking about.
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.
David McCullough
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The evil of technology was not technology itself, Lindbergh came to see after the war, not in airplanes or the myriad contrivances of modern technical igenuity, but in the extent to which they can distance us from our better moral nature, or sense of personal accountability.
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