Top 280 David McCullough Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “We learn much by tribulation, and by adversity our hearts are made better. -Bishop Milton Wright to Orville Wright, 20 Sept. 1908.”

— David McCullough

152. “Asked how it was that he could do so much and accomplish so much, he said, “I’ve learned to use every one of all the odds and ends of the time.”

— David McCullough

153. “The world needs you. There is large work to be done, good work, and you can make a difference. Whatever your life work, take it seriously and enjoy it. Let’s never be the kind of people who do things lukewarmly. If you’re going to ring the bell, give the rope one hell of a pull. I wish you the fullest lives possible – full of love and bells ringing.”

— David McCullough

154. “Two all-important lessons of history stand clearly expressed in this our national Capitol. The first is that little of consequence is ever accomplished alone. High achievement is nearly always a joint effort, as has been shown again and again in these halls when the leaders of different parties, representatives from differing constituencies and differing points of view, have been able, for the good of the country, to put those differences aside and work together.”

— David McCullough

155. “All of Johnstown’s three or four blind people had survived the flood.”

— David McCullough

156. “THE CAMPAIGN OF 1776 had ended with a second astonishing victory. Had Washington been born in the days of idolatry, declared the Pennsylvania Journal, he would be worshiped as a god. “If there are spots on his character, they are like the spots on the sun, only discernible by the magnifying powers of a telescope.”

— David McCullough

157. “Margaret Chase Smith “I speak as a Republican,” she said on that memorable day in the Senate. “I speak as a woman. I speak as a United States Senator. I speak as an American. I don’t want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the four horsemen of calumny – fear, ignorance, bigotry and smear.”

— David McCullough

158. “For more than fifty years, or long before the Wright brothers took up their part, would-be “conquerors of the air” and their strange or childish flying machines, as described in the press, had served as a continuous source of popular comic relief.”

— David McCullough

159. “He was also a vociferous champion of abstinence from hard or spirituous liquors – but then no one’s perfect. In.”

— David McCullough

160. “How unpardonable would it have been in you to have turned out a blockhead. How.”

— David McCullough

161. “In fact, the Americans of 1776 enjoyed a higher standard of living than any people in the world. Their material wealth was considerably less than it would become in time, still it was a great deal more than others had elsewhere. How people with so much, living on their own land, would ever choose to rebel against the ruler God had put over them and thereby bring down such devastation upon themselves was for the invaders incomprehensible.”

— David McCullough

162. “For some people the experience of crossing by carriage was positively terrifying. “You drive over to Suspension Bridge,” wrote Mark Twain, “and divide your misery between the chances of smashing down two hundred feet into the river below, and the chances of having a railway-train overhead smashing down onto you. Either possibility is discomforting taken by itself, but, mixed together, they amount in the aggregate to positive unhappiness.”

— David McCullough

163. “Read books. Try to understand the reason why things happen, why they are as they are. If you see only the surface phenomena, then the world becomes extremely confusing, ever more unsettling. But if the reasons are understood there’s a kind of simplicity that emerges.”

— David McCullough

164. “You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket. You will never have an idle hour.”

— David McCullough

165. “Washington insisted – possibly to rally his own resolve – that they must never lose sight of “the goodness of our cause.” Difficulties were not insurmountable. “Perseverance and spirit have done wonders in all ages.”

— David McCullough

166. “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”

— David McCullough

167. “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.”

— David McCullough

168. “When our founders spoke of the “pursuit of happiness,” they did not mean long vacations or the piling up of things. Happiness was in the enlargement of one’s being through the life of the mind and of the spirit.”

— David McCullough

169. “A veteran artist counsels a less experienced one to start a painting using colors in the middle range so that the painter can move to more extreme colors as the work progresses.”

— David McCullough

170. “In fact, the Americans of 1776 enjoyed a higher standard of living than any people in the world.”

— David McCullough

171. “As time would prove, he had written one of the great, enduring documents of the American Revolution. The constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is the oldest functioning written constitution in the world.”

— David McCullough

172. “Recalling a line attributed to Wilbur – “Well, if I talked a lot I should be like a parrot, which is the bird that speaks most and flies least.” – Buist.”

— David McCullough

173. “What had transpired that day in 1903, in the stiff winds and cold of the Outer Banks in less than two hours time, was one of the turning points in history, the beginning of change for the world far greater than any of those present could possibly have imagined.”

— David McCullough

174. “Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind. For years Rush had been investigating the causes of and remedies for madness and other “diseases” of the mind. “The subjects of them have hitherto been enveloped in mystery,” he wrote to Adams. “I have endeavored to bring them down to the level of all other diseases of the human body, and to show that the mind and body are moved by the same causes and subject to the same laws.”

— David McCullough

175. “It must not remain our desire only to acquire the art of the bird,” Lilienthal had written. “It is our duty not to rest until we have attained a perfect scientific conception of the problem of flight.”

— David McCullough

176. “Lord Bolingbroke, who was an eighteenth-century political philosopher, called history “philosophy taught with examples.”

— David McCullough

177. “I think instead of opposing systematically any administration, running down their characters and opposing all their measures, right or wrong, we ought to support every administration as far as we can in justice.”

— David McCullough

178. “The Democratic Party would win in November because the Democratic Party was the people’s party. The Republicans were the party of the privileged few, as always.”

— David McCullough

179. “One of my favorite lines from an inaugural address is this – I wonder if you remember who said it? “How can we love our country and not love our countrymen? And loving them, reach out a hand when they fall, heal them when they’re sick, and provide opportunities to make them self-sufficient so they will be equal in fact and not just in theory.” It was said by Ronald Reagan.”

— David McCullough

180. “On July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong, another American born and raised in western Ohio, stepped onto the moon, he carried with him, in tribute to the Wright brothers, a small swatch of the muslin from a wing of their 1903 Flyer.”

— David McCullough

181. “Oh! Almighty and Everlasting God, Creator of Heaven, Earth and the Universe: Help me to be, to think, to act what is right, because it is right; make me truthful, honest and honorable in all things; make me intellectually honest for the sake of right and honor and without thought of reward to me. Give me the ability to be charitable, forgiving and patient with my fellowmen – help me to understand their motives and their shortcomings – even as Thou understandest mine! Amen, Amen, Amen. Say.”

— David McCullough

182. “Strange it was that the British commander-in-chief, known for his chronic gambling, seemed to give no thought to how his American opponent might play his hand. O.”

— David McCullough

183. “Business is merely a form of warfare in which each combatant strives to get the business away from his competitors and at the same time keep them from getting what he already has.”

— David McCullough

184. “Later that same spring of 1872, in his own annual report, Roebling would write that most men got over their troubles either by suffering for a long time or “by applying the heroic mode of returning into the caisson at once as soon as pains manifested themselves.”

— David McCullough

185. “Every mind should be true to itself – should think, investigate and conclude for itself,” wrote Ingersoll.”

— David McCullough

186. “Boston Latin School.”

— David McCullough

187. “What was most striking about the long course of human events, Truman had concluded from his reading of history, were its elements of continuity, including, above all, human nature, which had changed little if at all through time. “The only new thing in the world is the history you don’t know,” he would one day tell an interviewer.”

— David McCullough

188. “These are strong, clear declarations of faith in education as the bulwark of freedom. For self-government to work, the people must be educated.”

— David McCullough

189. “But let us not forget, too, that it was John Adams who nominated George Washington to be commander-in-chief of the Continental Army. It was John Adams who insisted that Jefferson be the one to write the Declaration of Independence. And it was President John Adams who made John Marshall chief justice of the Supreme Court. As a casting director alone, he was brilliant. Abigail.”

— David McCullough

190. “Adams was both a devout Christian and an independent thinker, and he saw no conflict in that.”

— David McCullough

191. “To what object are my views directed?” he asked. “Am I grasping at money, or scheming for power?” Yes, he was amassing a library, but to what purpose? “Fame, fortune, power say some, are the ends intended by a library. The service of God, country, clients, fellow men, say others. Which of these lie nearest my heart?”

— David McCullough

192. “Not all pioneers went west.”

— David McCullough

193. “Jefferson saw history as largely a chronicle of mistakes to be avoided.”

— David McCullough

194. “By the close of summer, with increasing losses from disease, desertions, and absences of one sort or other, his army was in serious decline. Spirits suffered. The patriotic fervor that had sent thousands rushing to the scene in late April and May was hardly evident any longer.”

— David McCullough

195. “The author perceptively outlines what might be an underrated aspect of his subject and of many others whose public achievements are of note – a “gift for friendship”. McCullough says Adams, despite his towering intellect and curmudgeonly demeanor, had a soft heart for other people and a genuine interest in their particulars.”

— David McCullough

196. “The only way to compose myself and collect my thoughts,” he wrote in his diary,“is to set down at my table, place my diary before me, and take my pen into my hand.”

— David McCullough

197. “I pray heaven,” Adams wrote, “to bestow the best of blessings on this house, and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.”

— David McCullough

198. “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

199. “No bird soars in a calm. WILBUR WRIGHT.”

— David McCullough

200. “In a day and age when, unfortunately, so few write letters or keep a diary any longer, the Wright Papers stand as a striking reminder of a time when that was not the way and of the immense value such writings can have in bringing history to life.”

— David McCullough