Want Quotes by David McCullough

8 Want quotes by David McCullough

David McCullough’s eight short reflections on Want read like a historian’s quick note on human ambition. The collection is tight, yet each line provides a clear, grounded view of the forces that push us forward.

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I lament the want of a liberal education. I feel the mist of ignorance to surround me - Nathanael Greene

David McCullough

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

David McCullough

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I want people to see that all-important time in a different way-in the way it was. For of a number of reasons,…

David McCullough

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I'm absolutely positive it's in our human nature to want to know about the past. The two most popular movies of all…

David McCullough

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Curiosity is what separates us from the cabbages. It's accelerative. The more we know, the more we want to know.

David McCullough

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Little children can learn anything, just as they can learn a foreign language. The mind is so absorbent then. There ought to…

David McCullough

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I feel that what I do is a calling. I would pay to do what I do if I had to. I…

David McCullough

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I think that a good education ought to be in part the idea that ease and joy are not synonymous. Some of…

David McCullough

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With the Truman book, I wrote the entire account of his experiences in World War I before going over to Europe to follow his…

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“Steamboats by this time were becoming a familiar presence on the rivers and coastal waters of America, but not until 1838 did steam-powered ships…

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I feel that history is in many ways the most important of all subjects because it is about everything and because it's about who…

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“Even mighty states and kingdoms are not exempted. If we look into history, we shall find some nations rising from contemptible beginnings and spreading…

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History isn't just what happened, but what happened to whom and why and what would have been different if the cast of characters had…

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Nobody ever lived in the past.

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“Only TR openly declared his love for the job. “Nobody ever enjoyed the presidency as I did,” he boasted, and by all evidence that…

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“s ships Phoenix and Rose, in the company of three tenders, cast off their moorings at Staten Island and started up the harbor under…

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“a people may let a King fall, yet still remain a people, but if a King let his people slip from him, he is…

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Why limit yourself to the experience of your own relatively brief time on earth, according to your biological clock, when the whole realm of…

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“He worked at a plain, tall desk at which he wrote standing up or perched on a high stool,”

David McCullough

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“Nothing happens in isolation. Everything that happens has consequences. We”

David McCullough

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America faces an enemy who believes in enforced ignorance. And all that we stand for is the open mind, the generous spirit, the ideal…

David McCullough

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My shorthand answer is that I try to write the kind of book that I would like to read. If I can make it…

David McCullough

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“Seen under the microscope, Stegomyia is a creature of striking beauty. Its general color is dark gray, but the thorax is marked with a…

David McCullough

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