274 Quotes by David McCullough

How can we know who we are and where we are going if we don’t know anything about where we have come from and what we have been through, the courage shown, the costs paid, to be where we are?

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.

There are no people on earth in whom a spirit of enthusiastic zeal is so readily kindled, and burns so remarkably, as Americans.

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

The truth isn’t just the facts. You can have all the facts imaginable and miss the truth, just as you can have facts missing or some wrong, and reach the larger truth.

I often think of that when I hear people say that they haven’t time to read.

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.

Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives. – John Adams.

I think that a good education ought to be in part the idea that ease and joy are not synonymous. Some of the most fulfilling pleasures of life are to be found in work – found in work you love to do, work you want to do, work that makes you want to get out of bed in the morning.