Top 280 David McCullough Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “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

152. “Gentlemen, enlisted men may be entitled to morale problems, but officers are not. I expect all officers to take care of their own morale. No one is taking care of my morale. – General George C. Marshall.”

— David McCullough

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

— David McCullough

154. “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

155. “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

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

— David McCullough

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

— David McCullough

158. “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

159. “Had Howe pressed on the afternoon of the 27th, the British victory could have been total. Or had the wind turned earlier, and the British navy moved into the East River, the war and the chances of an independent United States of America could have been long delayed, or even ended there and then.”

— David McCullough

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

— David McCullough

161. “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

162. “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

163. “I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study paintings, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.”

— David McCullough

164. “Everybody wants something at the expense of everybody else and nobody thinks much of the other fellow,” Truman.”

— David McCullough

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

— David McCullough

166. “O kings and presidents, Adams said he saw little to distinguish them from other men. ‘If worthless men are sometimes at the head of affairs, it is, I believe, because worthless men are at the tail and the middle.”

— David McCullough

167. “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

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

— David McCullough

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

— David McCullough

170. “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

171. “The best dividends on the labor invested,” they said, “have invariably come from seeking more knowledge rather than more power.”

— David McCullough

172. “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

173. “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

174. “Take an interest in people. Get to know people. Get to know what they’ve been through before you pass judgment. That’s essential.”

— David McCullough

175. “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

176. “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

177. “Even mighty states and kingdoms are not exempted. If we look into history, we shall find some nations rising from contemptible beginnings and spreading their influence, until the whole globe is subjected to their ways. When they have reached the summit of grandeur, some minute and unsuspected cause commonly affects their ruin, and the empire of the world is transferred to some other place. Immortal.”

— David McCullough

178. “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

179. “Not all pioneers went west.”

— David McCullough

180. “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

181. “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

182. “Make business first, pleasure afterward, and that guarded. All the money anyone needs is just enough to prevent one from being a burden on others. He made a point of treating.”

— David McCullough

183. “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

184. “We believed in a good God, a bad Devil, and a hot Hell, and more than anything else we believed that same God did not intend man should ever fly.”

— David McCullough

185. “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

186. “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

187. “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

188. “He wasn’t a hero, or an original thinker. His beliefs were their beliefs, their way of talking was his way of talking. He was on their side. He was one of them. If he stumbled over a phrase or a name, he would grin and try again, and they would smile with.”

— David McCullough

189. “Then, in the way of a fatherly sermon, he added, ‘We learn much by tribulation, and by adversity our hearts are made better.”

— David McCullough

190. “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

191. “Never contradict anybody,” he was advised by Franklin, whom he admired above all men, though it was advice he hardly needed.”

— David McCullough

192. “Learning the secret of flight from a bird,” Orville would say, “was a good deal like learning the secret of magic from a magician.”

— David McCullough

193. “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

194. “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

195. “A man who has not better government of his tongue, no more command of his temper, is unfit for everything but children’s play and the company of boys.”

— David McCullough

196. “Roosevelt loved the subtleties of human relations... He was sensitive to nuances in a way that Harry Truman never was and never would be. Truman, with his rural Missouri background, and partly too, because of the limits of his education, was inclined to see things in far simpler terms, as right or wrong, wise or foolish. He dealt little in abstractions.”

— David McCullough

197. “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

198. “You will ever remember that all the end of study is to make you a good man and a useful citizen,” Adams.”

— David McCullough

199. “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

200. “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