David McCullough
26 quotes
Biography
David Gaub McCullough was an American popular historian and author. He was a two-time winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.
"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."[The Title Always Comes Last; NEH 2003 Jefferson Lecturer interview profile]"
"History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are."
"Nothing ever invented provides such sustenance, such infinite reward for time spent, as a good book."
"No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read."(The Course of Human Events, NEH Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities 2003)"
"Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love."
"Novelists talk about their characters starting to do things they didn’t expect them to. Well, I imagine every writer of biography or history, as well as fiction, has the experience of suddenly seeing a few pieces of the puzzle fit together. The chances of finding a new piece are fairly remote — though I’ve never written a book where I didn’t find something new — but it’s more likely you see something that’s been around a long time that others haven’t seen. Sometimes it derives from your own nature, your own interests. More often, it’s just that nobody bothered to look closely enough."
"Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard."
"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."; NEH 2003 Jefferson Lecturer interview profile]"
"Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard.", July/Aug. 2002, Vol. 23/No. 4)"
"No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read.", NEH Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities 2003)"
"Any nation that expects to be ignorant and free," Jefferson said, "expects what never was and never will be." And if the gap between the educated and the uneducated in America continues to grow as it is in our time, as fast as or faster than the gap between the rich and the poor, the gap between the educated and the uneducated is going to be of greater consequence and the more serious threat to our way of life. We must not, by any means, misunderstand that."
"In an exhibition wherein paintings of nudes were commonplace, that of Madame Gautreau in her black evening dress was considered scandalously erotic. -from The Greater Journey"
"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 musi"
"No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to"
"You can't be a full participant in our democracy if you don't know our history."
"[While writing history], I've kept the most interesting company imaginable with people long gone. Some I've come to know better than many I know in real life, since in real life we don't get to read other people's mail."
"Measurements "are never enough. The artist's eye and desire to breathe life into the subject must be the deciding factors."
"Curiosity is what separates us from the cabbages. It's accelerative. The more we know, the more we want to know."
"Rather than literally burning the midnight oil, which he judged to be unhealthy, John Adams advised his son to make the most of college by developing an inquisitive outlook that would prompt him to get to know the most exceptional scholars and question them closely. "Ask them about their tutors, manner of teaching. Observe what books lie on their tables. Fall into questions of literature, science, or what you will."
"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."
"All the money anyone needs is just enough to prevent one from being a burden to others. -Bishop Milton Wright"
"Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so"
"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."
"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."
"No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read."