Top 280 David McCullough Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “Crucial to Lee’s plan was the defense of that part of Long Island directly across the East River and particularly the imposing river bluffs near the tiny hamlet called Brooklyn, which was also spelled Breucklyn, Brucklyn, Broucklyn, Brookland, or Brookline, and amounted to no more than seven or eight houses and an old Dutch church that stood in the middle of the Jamaica Road, the main road inland from the Brooklyn ferry landing.”

— David McCullough

252. “The sunsets, he told her, were the most beautiful he had ever seen, the clouds lighting up in all colors, the stars at night so bright he could read his watch by them.”

— David McCullough

253. “Hardly a soul spoke a word of English. All this they had been forewarned about, but the difference between what one had been told and what one came to understand firsthand was enormous.”

— David McCullough

254. “The sorrows of a mother are beyond all human consolation.”

— David McCullough

255. “He was the first one on deck in the morning and generally the last to leave at night, and once, when nearly every passenger was miserably seasick and lay groaning in his berth, Roebling, his head spinning, his stomach churning, was resolutely walking the deck. The malady, he rationalized, “involves no danger at all,” noting that “a cheerful carefree disposition and a manly, vigorous spirit will have great influence on the sickness.” For.”

— David McCullough

256. “If a boy finds he can make a few articles with his hands, it tends to make him rely on himself. And the planning that is necessary for the execution of the work is a discipline and an education of great value to him.”

— David McCullough

257. “Religion, superstition, oaths, education, laws, all give way before passions, interest, and power.”

— David McCullough

258. “Some serious Christians may possibly tremble for the Ark, and think the Christian religion in danger when divested of the patronage of civil power. They may fear inroads from licentiousness and infidelity, on the one hand, and from sectaries and party divisions on the other. But we may dismiss our fears, when we consider that truth can never be in real hazard, where there is a sufficiency of light and knowledge, and full liberty to vindicate it.”

— David McCullough

259. “It is almost a reconciliation to having my leg broken to contemplate the amount of reading I am going to do this summer. I am getting better fast and I am afraid I’ll get well so soon I won’t get to read enough.”

— David McCullough

260. “Those for whom things came easily usually made less of an effort, not more.”

— David McCullough

261. “Talk helps shape one’s thoughts.”

— David McCullough

262. “Wright died in his room at home at 7 Hawthorn Street at 3:15 in the morning, Thursday, May 30, 1912. He was forty-five years old.”

— David McCullough

263. “To be unable to read was the ultimate measure of wretchedness.”

— David McCullough

264. “That the hand of God was involved in the birth of the new nation he had no doubt. “It is the will of heaven that the two countries should be sundered forever.” If the people now were to have “unbounded power,” and as the people were quite capable of corruption as “the great,” and thus high risks were involved, he would submit all his hopes and fears to an overruling providence, “in which unfashionable as the faith may be, I firmly believe.”

— David McCullough

265. “But stiff-necked and somber he was not, any more than were most Puritans, contrary to latter-day misconceptions. Puritans were as capable as any mortals of exuding an affable enjoyment of life, as was he. Like many a Puritan he loved good food, good wine, a good story, and good cheer.”

— David McCullough

266. “Thus began the Bulloch line in America, the annals of which, by Mittie’s time, included one noted.”

— David McCullough

267. “The letter was dated October 2. That night, as Orville later told the story, discussion in camp on aeronautical theory went on at such length that he indulged himself in more coffee than usual. Unable to sleep, he lay awake thinking about ways to achieve an even better system of control when suddenly he had an idea: the rear rudder, instead of being in a fixed position, should be hinged – movable.”

— David McCullough

268. “In truth, the color line, of which almost nothing was said in print, cut through every facet of daily life in the Zone, and it was as clearly drawn and as closely observed as anywhere in the Deep South or the most rigid colonial enclaves in Africa.”

— David McCullough

269. “You are facing one of the greatest decisions of your career. You must choose between Shonts and Gorgas. If you fall back upon the old methods of sanitation, you will fail, just as the French failed. If you back up Gorgas and his ideas and let him pursue his campaign against the mosquitoes, you will get your canal.”

— David McCullough

270. “On a medical school professor noted for slowly, carefully interviewing the patient: “He taught the love of truth.”

— David McCullough

271. “Eustatius in the Caribbean. At present, there was powder.”

— David McCullough

272. “Measurements “are never enough. The artist’s eye and desire to breathe life into the subject must be the deciding factors.”

— David McCullough

273. “Beware the purists, the doctrinaires. It has been by the empirical method largely, by way of trial and error, that we have come so far. America itself is an experiment and we must bear that always in mind.”

— David McCullough

274. “At one point an elderly resident Frenchman told him that if he persisted with his plan there would not be trees enough on the Isthmus to make the crosses to put over the graves of his laborers.”

— David McCullough

275. “When you see one of these graceful crafts sailing over your head, and possibly over your home, as I expect you will in the near future, see if you don’t agree with me that the flying machine is one of God’s most gracious and precious gifts.”

— David McCullough

276. “He asked for national compulsory health insurance to be funded by payroll deductions. Under the system, all citizens would receive medical and hospital service irrespective of their ability to pay. And.”

— David McCullough

277. “But Brooklyn, in fact, was the third-largest city in America and had been for some time. It was a major manufacturing center – for glass, steel, tinware, marble mantels, hats, buggy whips, chemicals, cordage, whiskey, beer, glue. It was a larger seaport than New York, a larger city than Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, San Francisco, and growing faster than any of them – faster even than.”

— David McCullough

278. “He always kept three books at hand – one scientific, one of classical literature or history, one light fiction – which he took up in turn, giving each exactly twenty minutes according to a pocket watch placed on the table beside his chair. In this fashion, he said, he was able to remember what he read.”

— David McCullough

279. “He was always on the job early. Some mornings, at his desk before the staff arrived, he would answer the phone himself, telling callers what the library hours were, or, in reply to further questions, saying he knew because it was his library. “This is the old man himself.”

— David McCullough

280. “In America, applause is won only by physical exertion.”

— David McCullough

281. “In no way did any of this discourage or deter Wilbur and Orville Wright, any more than the fact that they had had no college education, no formal technical training, no experience working with anyone other than themselves, no friends in high places, no financial backers, no government subsidies, and little money of their own. Or.”

— David McCullough

282. “By the time he went to work for James J. Hill in 1889, he had survived Mexican fevers, Indian attack, Upper Michigan mosquitoes, and Canadian blizzards. He had been treed by wolves on one occasion; he.”

— David McCullough

283. “The change from the crowded, stifling hot, noisy confines of the workspace at Dayton to the open reaches of sea and sky on the Outer Banks could hardly have been greater or more welcome. They loved Kitty Hawk. “Every year adds to our comprehension of the wonders of this place,” wrote Orville to Katharine soon after arrival.”

— David McCullough

284. “The title did not make the man, of course, but it enhanced the standing of the man in the eyes of others.”

— David McCullough

285. “Especially for those who had been with Washington and who knew what a close call it was at the beginning – how often circumstance, storms, contrary winds, the oddities of strengths of individual character had made the difference – the outcome seemed a little short of a miracle.”

— David McCullough

286. “Well, they’ve made a flight.”

— David McCullough

287. “Today’s prime fact is war,” Henry Stimson had said at the start of one Interim.”

— David McCullough

288. “The happiness of the people was the purpose of government, he wrote, and therefore that form of government was best which produced the greatest amount of happiness for the largest number. And since all “sober inquirers after truth” agreed that happiness derived from virtue, that form of government with virtue as its foundation was more likely than any other to promote the general happiness.”

— David McCullough

289. “And it’s so easy because you become so self-conscious and so intellectual and so analytical about it in the long run that you lose that wonderful sort of ego that you have that says, ‘Oh, goddamn it, I don’t care; I love it anyway; I’m going to do it!”

— David McCullough

290. “Adams lay peacefully, his mind clear, by all signs. Then late in the afternoon, according to several who were present in the room, he stirred and whispered clearly enough to be understood, “Thomas Jefferson survives.”

— David McCullough

291. “I steer my bark with hope in the head, leaving fear astern.” Their.”

— David McCullough

292. “Republicans in Washington have a habit of becoming curiously deaf to the voice of the people. They have a hard time hearing what the ordinary people of the country are saying. But they have no trouble at all hearing what Wall Street is saying. They are able to catch the slightest whisper from big business and the special interests.”

— David McCullough

293. “We must bear the atmosphere of the hour,” the President said. “It will pass away.” And like many of McKinley’s instinctive responses, it was the right one.”

— David McCullough

294. “Your father’s zeal for books will be one of the last desires which will quit him,” Abigail observed to John Quincy.”

— David McCullough