Quotes from David McCullough

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.

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

I had been writing for about twelve years. I knew pretty well how you could find things out, but I had never been trained in an academic way how to go about the research.

Climb the mountain so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.

You have to have wisdom and knowledge as well as virtue to preserve your rights and liberties.

The pull, the attraction of history, is in our human nature. What makes us tick? Why do we do what we do? How much is luck the deciding factor?

My wife, the star I steer by.

Washington was a man of exceptional, almost excessive self-command, rarely permitting himself any show of discouragement or despair.

Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love.

The title always comes last. What I really work hard on is the beginning. Where do you begin? In what tone do you begin? I almost have to have a scene in my mind.

He had kept his head, kept his health and his strength, bearing up under a weight of work and worry that only a few could have carried.

I love all sides of the work but that doesn't mean it isn't hard.

First of all, you can make the argument that there's no such thing as the past. Nobody lived in the past.

Every book is a new journey. I never felt I was an expert on a subject as I embarked on a project.

Real success is finding you lifework in the work that you love.

Courage is contagious. If a leader shows courage, others get the idea.

The first of all qualities of a general is courage.

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?

Real success is finding your lifework in the worth that you love.