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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 tracks in the war. When I got there, there was a certain satisfaction in finding I had it right - it does look like that."
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Exlpore more War quotes
"The doctrine that war is always a greater evil seems to imply a materialist ethic, a belief that death and pain are the greatest evils. But I do not think they are... All men die, and most men miserably. That two soldiers on opposite sides, each believing his own country to be in the right, each at the moment when his selfishness is most in abeyance and his will to sacrifice in the ascendant, should kill [each] other in plain battle seems to me by no means one of the most terrible things in this terrible world."
"In the matter of war, ask this question to yourself and to your own fellow country men: Have you ever seen any politician in your country without legs, without arms, without eyes after war? No! You can't see such a thing because honourless politicians always stay in the safe ports while they send others to the zone of death!"
"Wars are, of course, as a rule to be avoided; but they are far better than certain kinds of peace."
"Nations never see themselves clearly in the mirror, much less when war preys on their minds."
"Wars and revolutions and battles, you see, are due simply and solely to the body and its desires. All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service."
Explore more quotes by David McCullough
"Every book is a new journey. I never felt I was an expert on a subject as I embarked on a project."
"In time I began to understand that it's when you start writing that you really find out what you don't know and need to know."
"I can fairly be called an amateur because I do what I do, in the original sense of the word - for love, because I love it. On the other hand, I think that those of us who make our living writing history can also be called true professionals."
"People are so helpful. People will stop what they're doing to show you something, to walk with you through a section of the town, or explain how a suspension bridge really works."
"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."
"There's an awful temptation to just keep on researching. There comes a point where you just have to stop, and start writing."
"First of all, you can make the argument that there's no such thing as the past. Nobody lived in the past."
"I just thank my father and mother, my lucky stars, that I had the advantage of an education in the humanities."
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