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"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."
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"We live in an era with no historical precedents. History is no longer useful as a tool in helping us understand current changes."
"History shows us that people often make mistakes, they give wrong decisions, they vote for the wrong persons! And history also shows us that in the end they pay a heavy price for it!"
"If somebody tells you 'History will never forgive you,' just laugh at him! Because when the history comes, you won't be here! The threat of history never forgives you is a useless threat!"
"Throughout the human history millions have died because of the kings and the queens, because of the presidents and the prime ministers, because of the Caesars and the duces, because of all these little charlatans with big ego!"
"History is full of paths and the most useful, the most rational paths for humanity is mostly empty!"
"The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments."
Explore more quotes by David McCullough
"There's an awful temptation to just keep on researching. There comes a point where you just have to stop, and start writing."
"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."
"To me history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is."
"My next book is also set in the eighteenth century. It's about the Revolution, with the focus on the year 1776. It's about Washington and the army and the war. It's the nadir, the low point of the United States of America."
"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."
"My shorthand answer is that I try to write the kind of book that I would like to read. If I can make it clear and interesting and compelling to me, then I hope maybe it will be for the reader."
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