Quotes by David McCullough

Measurements are never enough. The artists eye and desire to breathe life into the subject must be the deciding factors.

Those for whom things came easily usually made less of an effort, not more.

One of the regrets of my life is that I did not study Latin. Im absolutely convinced, the more I understand these eighteenth century people, that it was that grounding in Greek and Latin that gave them their sense of the classic virtues: the classic ideals of honor, virtue, the good society, and their historic examples of what they could try to live up to.

...it is always easier to deal with things than with men, and no one can direct his life entirely as he would choose. -Wilbur Wright, 1911

We who are residing in a foreign country, away from the immediate scene of action, perhaps can feel more deeply than those at home the evil effects of the present distracted condition of our country.

There was no opiate like a French pillow.

All the money anyone needs is just enough to prevent one from being a burden to others. -Bishop Milton Wright

To be unable to read was the ultimate measure of wretchedness.

Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. Thats why its so

The evil of technology was not technology itself, Lindbergh came to see after the war, not in airplanes or the myriad contrivances of modern technical igenuity, but in the extent to which they can distance us from our better moral nature, or sense of personal accountability.

A man who will steal for me will steal from me. Theodore Roosevelt, dismissing on the spot one of his best cowhands who was about to claim for his boss an unmarked animal.

The source of our suffering has been our timidity. We have been afraid to think....Let us dare to read, think, speak, write.

Government is nothing more than the combined force of society or the united power of the multitude for the peace, order, safety, good, and happiness of the people... There is no king or queen bee distinguished from all the others by size or figure or beauty and variety of colors in the human hive. No man has yet produced any revelation from heaven in his favor, any divine communication to govern his fellow men. Nature throws us all into the world equal and alike... The preservation of liberty depends upon the intellectual and moral character of the people. As long as knowledge and virtue are diffused generally among the body of a nation it is impossible they should be enslaved. Ambition is one of the more ungovernable passions of the human heart. The love of power is insatiable and uncontrollable... There is a danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living wth power to endanger public liberty.

A veteran artist counsels a less experienced one to start a painting using colors in the middle range so that the painter can move to more extreme colors as the work progresses.

The author perceives nuances of Abigail Adams character in the occasional errors she makes in readily quoting John Milton. Rather than giving the observer a reason to quibble, they are evidence that she had absorbed Miltons works enough to feel comfortable quoting them from memory.

Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives. - John Adams

The reason is, because it’s of more importance to community, that innocence should be protected, than it is, that guilt should be punished.

We learn much by tribulation, and by adversity our hearts are made better. -Bishop Milton Wright to Orville Wright, 20 Sept. 1908

Curiosity is what separates us from the cabbages. Its accelerative. The more we know, the more we want to know.

On a medical school professor noted for slowly, carefully interviewing the patient: He taught the love of truth.