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

More quotes by 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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You can't be a full participant in our democracy if you don't know our history.
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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Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives. - John Adams
David McCullough
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Read. Read. Read. Read. Read great books. Read poetry, history, biography. Read the novels that have stood the test of time. And read closely.
David McCullough
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Napoleon could never imagine that some people loved their country as much as he loved his own.
David McCullough
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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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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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There are no people on earth in whom a spirit of enthusiastic zeal is so readily kindled, and burns so remarkably, as Americans
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 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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History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.
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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We all know the old expression, I'll work my thoughts out on paper. There's something about the pen that focuses the brain in a way that nothing else does. That is why we must have more writing in the schools, more writing in all subjects, not just in English classes.
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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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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I love Dickens. I love the way he sets a scene.
David McCullough
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Never assume that people in positions of responsibility are behaving responsibly.
David McCullough
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I think it is one of the most extraordinary elections, a turning point for our country and for the world. That remarkable young man [Barack Obama] has kept his demeanor, kept his temperament and has shown a power to inspire. I see what energy that he has inspired among the young. Well, it inspires us old goats too.
David McCullough
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The past after all is only another name for someone else's present.
David McCullough