110+ David McCullough Quotes On History, Authoritative And Engaging

David McCullough was an American historian, author, and lecturer. He was best known for his works on the American Revolution and the American Civil War. He won two Pulitzer Prizes and the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work. Following is our collection on famous quotes by David McCullough on history, authoritative, engaging.

Top 10 David McCullough Quotes

1. To me history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is.
2. Never assume that people in positions of responsibility are behaving responsibly.
3. Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love.
4. And read… read all the time… read as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect. Read as a nourishing staple of life.
5. History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.
6. Books can change your life. Some of the most influential people in our lives are characters we meet in books.
7. A nation that forgets its past can function no better than an individual with amnesia.
8. I'm drawn particularly to stories that evolve out of the character of the protagonist.
9. Courage is contagious. If a leader shows courage, others get the idea.
10. I work very hard on the writing, writing and rewriting and trying to weed out the lumber.

David McCullough Short Quotes

• If everyone is special, then no one is. If everyone gets a trophy, trophies become meaningless.
• Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives. - John Adams
• To this noble end the delegates had pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.
• May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.
• They must be cool but determined...he threatened instant death to any man who showed cowardice.
• It was an utterly phenomenal achievement.
• To write is to think, and to write well is to think well.
• I often think of that when I hear people say that they haven't time to read.
• Freedom is found through the portals of our nation's libraries.
• The more we see the founders as humans the more we can understand them.

David McCullough Quotes About History

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

No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read. — David McCullough

We should draw on our story, we should draw on our history. If we don't know who we are, if we don't know how we became what we are, we're going to start suffering from all the obvious detrimental effects of amnesia. — David McCullough

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

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

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

When I'm reading for my own pleasure, I read things other than history or archival material. I read a lot of fiction. I'm very fond of mysteries. — David McCullough

It would be the most crucial day of the entire war. — David McCullough

Read. Read every chance you get. Read to keep growing. Read history. Read poetry. Read for pure enjoyment. Read a book called Life on a Little Known Planet. It's about insects. It will make you feel better. — David McCullough

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

David McCullough Quotes About Inspiring

Since September 11, it seems to me that never in our lifetime, except possibly in the early stages of World War II, has it been clearer that we have as a source of strength, a source of direction, a source of inspiration - our story. — David McCullough

Climb the mountain so you can see the world, not so the world can see you. — David McCullough

There is only one person who can measure your success. That person is you. — David McCullough

Spotting talent is one of the essential elements of great leadership. — David McCullough

David McCullough Quotes About Love

Develop and protect a moral sensibility and demonstrate the character to apply it. Dream big. Work hard. Think for yourself. Love everything you love, everyone you love, with all your might. And do so, please, with a sense of urgency, for every tick of the clock subtracts from fewer and fewer... — David McCullough

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

When a friend of Abigail and John Adams was killed at Bunker Hill, Abigail's response was to write a letter to her husband and include these words, "My bursting heart must find vent at my pen. — David McCullough

Real success is finding your life work in the work that you love. That's it. Don't worry about making a living, don't worry about popularity or fame. Make what you do ... count more than what you own. — David McCullough

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

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

I love Dickens. I love the way he sets a scene. — David McCullough

I love all sides of the work but that doesn't mean it isn't hard. — David McCullough

Napoleon could never imagine that some people loved their country as much as he loved his own. — David McCullough

I think that we need history as much as we need bread or water or love. — David McCullough

David McCullough Quotes About Work

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

When the founders wrote about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they didn't mean longer vacations and more comfortable hammocks. They meant the pursuit of learning. The pursuit of improvement and excellence. In hard work is happiness. — David McCullough

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

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

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

Real success is finding you lifework in the work that you love. — David McCullough

He had kept his head, kept his health and his strength, bearing up under a weight of work and worry that only a few could have carried. — David McCullough

The title always comes last. What I really work hard on is the beginning. Where do you begin? In what tone do you begin? I almost have to have a scene in my mind. — David McCullough

My strong feeling is that we must learn more about how we learn. I'm convinced that we learn by struggling to find the solution to a problem on our own with some guidance, but getting in and getting our hands dirty and working it. — David McCullough

I could not do what I do without the kindness, consideration, resourcefulness and work of librarians, particularly in public libraries... What started me writing history happened because of some curiosity that I had about some photographs I'd seen in the Library of Congress. — David McCullough

David McCullough Famous Quotes And Sayings

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. — David McCullough

We are all what we are, in large degree, because of others who have helped, coached, taught, counseled, who set a standard by example, who've taken an interest in our interests, opened doors, opened our minds, helped us see, who gave encouragement when we needed it, who reprimanded or prodded when we needed it, and at critical moments, inspired. — David McCullough

Why limit yourself to the experience of your own relatively brief time on earth, according to your biological clock, when the whole realm of the human experience reaching back infinitely far is available to you? — David McCullough

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

I think the public library system is one of the most amazing American institutions. Free for everybody. If you ever get the blues about the status of American culture there are still more public libraries than there are McDonald's. During the worst of the Depression not one public library closed their doors. — David McCullough

I just thank my father and mother, my lucky stars, that I had the advantage of an education in the humanities. — David McCullough

Nothing ever invented provides such sustenance, such infinite reward for time spent, as a good book. — David McCullough

We still dislike hypocrites. It's a very American characteristic. We still like people who have ideas and who are willing to stand up for what they believe in. We're very forgiving of failures and very willing to give people a second and third chance if they mean to do better and are sorry for what they've done. — David McCullough

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

Washington was a man of exceptional, almost excessive self-command, rarely permitting himself any show of discouragement or despair. — David McCullough

I had been writing for about twelve years. I knew pretty well how you could find things out, but I had never been trained in an academic way how to go about the research. — David McCullough

I've always been dissatisfied, I know that. But lately I find that I reek of discontentment. It fills my throat, and it floods my brain. And sometimes I fear there is no longer a dream, but only the discontentment. — David McCullough

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

My shorthand answer is that I try to write the kind of book that I would like to read. If I can make it clear and interesting and compelling to me, then I hope maybe it will be for the reader. — David McCullough

I'm very aware how many distractions the reader has in life today, how many good reasons there are to put the book down. — David McCullough

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

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

With the Truman book, I wrote the entire account of his experiences in World War I before going over to Europe to follow his tracks in the war. When I got there, there was a certain satisfaction in finding I had it right - it does look like that. — David McCullough

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

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

The preparations were elaborate and mammoth in scale, and Washington threw himself into the effort, demanding that not an hour be lost. — David McCullough

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

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

History is about life. It's awful when the life is squeezed out of it and there's no flavor left, no uncertainties, no horsing around. It always disturbed me how many biographers never gave their subjects a chance to eat. You can tell a lot about people by how they eat, what they eat, and what kind of table manners they have. — David McCullough

On Christmas morning when I was a child, my mother would leave a book wrapped at the foot of the bed, which was a hint that Santa had come. It was also her way of keeping us in bed a little longer before we went downstairs. So I've always associated books with happiness and gifts. And they are. I can't get enough of them. — David McCullough

Curiosity is what separates us from the cabbages. It's accelerative. The more we know, the more we want to know. — David McCullough

In fact, it was the largest expeditionary force of the 18th century. The largest, most powerful force ever set forth from Britain or any nation. — David McCullough

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

Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard. — David McCullough

I lament the want of a liberal education. I feel the mist of ignorance to surround me - Nathanael Greene — David McCullough

I want people to see that all-important time in a different way-in the way it was. For of a number of reasons, including the absence of photographs, we tend to see the men and women of the Revolution as not quite real. And we have far too little sense of what they suffered. — David McCullough

There's no such thing as a foreseeable future. — David McCullough

One of the things about the arts that is so important is that in the arts you discover the only way to learn how to do it is by doing it. You can't write by reading a book about it. The only way to learn how to write a book is to sit down and try to write a book — David McCullough

The source of our suffering has been our timidity. We have been afraid to think....Let us dare to read, think, speak, write. — David McCullough

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

First of all, you can make the argument that there's no such thing as the past. Nobody lived in the past. — David McCullough

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

The pull, the attraction of history, is in our human nature. What makes us tick? Why do we do what we do? How much is luck the deciding factor? — David McCullough

History is not just about dates and quotations. And it's not just about politics, the military and social issues, though much of it of course is about that. It's about everything. It's about life history. It's human. And we have to see it that way. We have to teach it that way. We have to read it that way. It's about art, music, literature, money, science, love - the human experience. — David McCullough

Home is really where education does begin. — David McCullough

I feel very strongly that history is about everything. It isn't just about politics or the military or social issues. If art, music, engineering, science, medicine, finance, the world of architecture and technology - if those are left out, then you're not getting a full sense of the human condition. History is human and we human beings are involved in all kinds of things and that's part of our humanity. — David McCullough

I can fairly be called an amateur because I do what I do, in the original sense of the word - for love, because I love it. On the other hand, I think that those of us who make our living writing history can also be called true professionals. — David McCullough

A leader must look and act the part. — David McCullough

To hold the reader's attention, you have to bring the person who's reading the book inside the experience of the time: What was it like to have been alive then? What were these people like as human beings? — David McCullough

The great thing about the arts is that you can only learn to do it by doing it. — David McCullough

Read somewhat in the English poets every day. You will find them elegant, entertaining and constructive companions through your whole life. — David McCullough

You have overburdened your argument with ostentatious erudition. — David McCullough

George P. A. Healy; "I knew no one in France, I was utterly ignorant of the language, I did not know what I should do when once there; but I was not yet one-and-twenty, and I had a great stock of courage, of inexperience—which is sometimes a great help—and a strong desire to be my very best. — David McCullough

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

Housetops were covered with 'gazers'; all wharves that offered a view were jammed with people ... As British officers happily reminded one another, it was the largest fleet ever seen in American waters. In fact it was the largest expeditionary force of the 18th century, the largest, most powerful force ever sent forth by Britain or any other nation. — David McCullough

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

Yes, this is a dangerous time. Yes, this is a time full of shadows and fear. But we have been through worse before and we have faced more difficult days before. We have shown courage and determination, and skillful and inventive and courageous and committed responses to crisis before. — David McCullough

I think it's important to remember that these men are not perfect. If they were marble gods, what they did wouldn't be so admirable. The more we see the founders as humans the more we can understand them. — David McCullough

Little children can learn anything, just as they can learn a foreign language. The mind is so absorbent then. There ought to be a real program to educate teachers who want to teach grade school children about history. — David McCullough

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

...Had proven himself a leader of remarkable ability, a man not only of enterprising ideas, but with the staying power to carry them out. — David McCullough

Once I discovered the endless fascination of doing the research and of doing the writing, I knew I had found what I wanted to do in my life. Every book is a new journey. I never felt I was an expert on a subject as I embarked on a project. — David McCullough

Take the teacher not the course. Find out who the great professors are - the great teachers - and take their courses because a subject that you may not think you're interested in may turn out to be infinitely fascinating because of the way it's taught. — David McCullough

The first of all qualities of a general is courage. — David McCullough

Unlike the people you see in Mathew Brady's photographs from the Civil War, the men and women of the Revolution seem more like characters in a costume pageant. And it's a pageant in which the performers are all handsome as stage actors, with uniforms and dress that are always costume perfect. — David McCullough

Nobody ever lived in the past. — David McCullough

I love to go to the places where things happen. I like to walk the walk and see how the light falls and what winter feels like. — David McCullough

Just imagine if in his inaugural address John F. Kennedy had said, 'Ask not what your country can, you know, do for you, but what you can, like, do for your country actually. — David McCullough

One of the regrets of my life is that I did not study Latin. I'm absolutely convinced, the more I understand these eighteenth-century people, that it was that grounding in Greek and Latin that gave them their sense of the classic virtues: the classic ideals of honor, virtue, the good society, and their historic examples of what they could try to live up to. — David McCullough

My wife, the star I steer by. — David McCullough

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

With the situation as gray as it could be, no one was more conspicuous in his calm presence of mind than Washington. They must be "cool but determined" he had told the men before the battle, when spirits were high. Now, in the face of catastrophe, he was demonstrating what he meant by his own example. Whatever anger or torment or despair he felt, he kept to himself. — David McCullough

The past after all is only another name for someone else's present. — David McCullough

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

Only those who [do] nothing [make] no mistakes. — David McCullough

My love is to tell a story but I like stories that evolve from character, from the nature of the individuals involved. — David McCullough

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

Life Lessons by David McCullough

1. David McCullough teaches us that hard work and dedication can lead to great success. He encourages us to never give up and to always strive for excellence.
2. He also emphasizes the importance of knowledge, and encourages us to learn from the past and use it to inform our decisions in the present.
3. Finally, he reminds us to be humble, to appreciate the little things in life, and to be grateful for the opportunities we have.