Quote

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

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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
Feels
Pay
Writing
Books
Work
Write
Long
Ideas
Never
Live
Would
Book
Like
Enough
Explore
Feel
Calling

More quotes by David McCullough

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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
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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 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
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They must be cool but determined...he threatened instant death to any man who showed cowardice.
David McCullough
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If you get down about the state of American culture, just remember there are still more public libraries in this country than there are McDonalds.
David McCullough
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Courage is contagious. If a leader shows courage, others get the idea.
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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Never assume that people in positions of responsibility are behaving responsibly.
David McCullough
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Your education never stops and college is just the beginning. You come out of college with a huge advantage in that you've ideally and more times than not you've come out with a love of learning and that's what matters above all.
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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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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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
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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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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
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First of all, you can make the argument that there's no such thing as the past. Nobody lived in the past.
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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Climb the mountain so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.
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