David McCullough History Quotations

History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.

A nation that forgets its past can function no better than an individual with amnesia.

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

It would be the most crucial day of the entire war.

Housetops were covered with 'gazers'; all wharves that offered a view were jammed with people ... As British officers happily reminded one another, it was the largest fleet ever seen in American waters. In fact it was the largest expeditionary force of the 18th century, the largest, most powerful force ever sent forth by Britain or any other nation.

Napoleon could never imagine that some people loved their country as much as he loved his own.

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."" ()

That said, I do feel in my heart of hearts that if history isn't well written, it isn't going to be read, and if it isn't read it's going to die." ()

What started me writing history happened because of some curiosity that I had about some photographs I'd seen in the Library of Congress." ()