David McCullough Past Quotations

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

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

Nobody ever lived in the past.

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.

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.

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.

The past after all is only another name for someone else's present.