David McCullough

David McCullough
David Gaub McCulloughis an American author, narrator, historian, and lecturer. He is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian award...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionHistorian
Date of Birth7 July 1933
CityPittsburgh, United States
CountryUnited States of America
past history forget
A nation that forgets its past can function no better than an individual with amnesia.
past names
The past after all is only another name for someone else's present.
past who-we-are today
Each generation, we peel back biases that have blinded those before us. The more we know about the past enables us to ask richer and more provocative questions about who we are today.
past wind two
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.
past reality different
You can make the argument that there's no such thing as the past. Nobody lived in the past. They lived in the present. It is their present, not our present, and they don't know how it's going to come out. They weren't just like we are because they lived in that very different time. You can't understand them if you don't understand how they perceived reality.
past firsts argument
First of all, you can make the argument that there's no such thing as the past. Nobody lived in the past.
past
Nobody ever lived in the past.
curiosity happened history library seen
What started me writing history happened because of some curiosity that I had about some photographs I'd seen in the Library of Congress." ()
art citizen economy good history immense man music people poetry reading shaped somewhat works
Reading history is good for all of us," he says, not surprisingly, perhaps, but his rationale is a fresh, somewhat bracing thought: "If you know history, you know that there is no such thing as a self-made man or self-made woman. We are shaped by people we have never met. Yes, reading history will make you a better citizen and more appreciative of the law, and of freedom, and of how the economy works or doesn't work, but it is also an immense pleasurethe way art is, or music is, or poetry is. And it's never stale."" ()
courses english johnson life people pleasures pope samuel swift
To go back and read Swift and Defoe and Samuel Johnson and Smollett and Pope - all those people we had to read in college English courses - to read them now is to have one of the infinite pleasures in life.
work
When I began, I thought that the way one should work was to do all the research and then write the book.
finding love success work
Real success is finding you lifework in the work that you love.
army british landed lifted people thirty thousand troops
When I read that the British army had landed thirty-two thousand troops - and I had realized, not very long before, that Philadelphia only had thirty thousand people in it - it practically lifted me out of my chair." ()
parting
It was like the parting of the seas." ()