Top 280 David McCullough Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “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

52. “Washington was a man of exceptional, almost excessive self-command, rarely permitting himself any show of discouragement or despair.”

— David McCullough

53. “To shut yourself from history is to shut yourself off from say music or painting or the theatre, literature for the rest of your life. It would be to cheat yourself of the pleasures of life.”

— David McCullough

54. “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

55. “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

56. “Morality only is eternal. All the rest is balloon and bubble from the cradle to the grave.”

— David McCullough

57. “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

58. “The first of all qualities of a general is courage.”

— David McCullough

59. “My next book is also set in the eighteenth century. Its about the Revolution, with the focus on the year 1776. Its about Washington and the army and the war. Its the nadir, the low point of the United States of America.”

— David McCullough

60. “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

61. “If we think back through our own lives, the subjects that you liked best in school almost certainly were taught by the teachers you liked best. And the teacher you liked best was the teacher who cared about the subject she taught.”

— David McCullough

62. “It was an utterly phenomenal achievement.”

— David McCullough

63. “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

64. “May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.”

— David McCullough

65. “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

66. “First of all, you can make the argument that there’s no such thing as the past. Nobody lived in the past.”

— David McCullough

67. “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

68. “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

69. “Nobody ever lived in the past.”

— David McCullough

70. “I just thank my father and mother, my lucky stars, that I had the advantage of an education in the humanities.”

— David McCullough

71. “There is only one person who can measure your success. That person is you.”

— David McCullough

72. “It was a day and age that saw no reason why one could not learn whatever was required – learn vitally anything – by the close study of books.”

— David McCullough

73. “Nothing ever invented provides such sustenance, such infinite reward for time spent, as a good book.”

— David McCullough

74. “No harm’s done to history by making it something someone would want to read.”

— David McCullough

75. “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

76. “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

77. “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

78. “My wife, the star I steer by.”

— David McCullough

79. “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

80. “My love is to tell a story but I like stories that evolve from character, from the nature of the individuals involved.”

— David McCullough

81. “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

82. “The past after all is only another name for someone else’s present.”

— David McCullough

83. “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

84. “Read somewhat in the English poets every day. You will find them elegant, entertaining and constructive companions through your whole life.”

— David McCullough

85. “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

86. “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

87. “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

88. “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

89. “When you start to write, things begin to come into focus in a way they don’t when you’re not writing. It’s a very good way to find out how much you don’t know because you learn specifically what you need to know that you don’t know at the moment by writing.”

— David McCullough

90. “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

91. “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

92. “Indeed, bribery, favoritism, and corruption in a great variety of forms were rampant not only in politics, but in all levels of society.”

— David McCullough

93. “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.”

— David McCullough

94. “I love all sides of the work but that doesn’t mean it isn’t hard.”

— David McCullough

95. “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

96. “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

97. “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

98. “The most interesting people are never perfect.”

— David McCullough

99. “I work very hard on the writing, writing and rewriting and trying to weed out the lumber.”

— David McCullough

100. “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