Mccullough Quotes

Business is merely a form of warfare in which each combatant strives to get the business away from his competitors and at the same time keep them from getting what he already has. ~ David McCullough

PICARD: Did you read that book I gave you? (Wesley reacts, barely concealing a grimace as he recalls.)
WESLEY: Some of it.
PICARD: That's reassuring.
WESLEY: I just don't have much time.
PICARD: (re the book in his hand) There is no greater challenge than the study of philosophy. (Wesley glances over at Picard's book)
WESLEY: William James sure won't be on my Starfleet exams.
PICARD: The important things never will be. Anyone can be trained to deal with technology, and the mechanics of piloting a starship.
WESLEY: But Starfleet Academy--
PICARD: It takes more than just that. Open your mind to the past... to history, art, philosophy. And then... (re: the stars) ...this will mean something.
(Wesley considers this, almost embarrassed as he realizes Picard does truly care about him.)
Then: PICARD (continuing) Just consider James' wisdom: "Philosophy... is not a technical matter... it is our sense of what life honestly means... our individual way of feeling the total push and pressure of the cosmos."
(then) That's what I want for you.

From:
STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION
"Samaritan Snare" #40272-143
Written by Robert L. McCullough ~ Jean-Luc Picard

The French dine to gratify, we to appease appetite," observed John Sanderson. "We demolish dinner, they eat it." The general misconception back home was that French food was highly seasoned, but not at all, wrote James Fenimore Cooper. The genius in French cookery was "in blending flavors and in arranging compounds in such a manner as to produce ... the lightest and most agreeable food." The charm of a French dinner, like so much in French life, was the "effect. ~ David McCullough

Later on after the war was over the women were to find this constantly; the men who had actually been in the thick of battle never opened their mouths about it, refused to join the ex-soldiers' clubs and leagues, wanted nothing to do with institutions perpetuating the memory of war. ~ Colleen McCullough

For a West Point graduate to abandon his appointed task in the face of adversity or personal discomfort was all but inconceivable. ~ David McCullough

I love to go to the places where things happen. I like to walk the walk and see how the light falls and what winter feels like. ~ David McCullough

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

It so happens that the work which is likely to be our most durable monument, and to convey some knowledge of us to the most remote posterity, is a work of bare utility; not a shrine, not a fortress, not a palace, but a bridge. - MONTGOMERY SCHUYLER IN HARPER'S WEEKLY, MAY 24, 1883 ~ David McCullough

Once I've got the first draft down on paper then I do five or six more drafts, the last two of which will be polishing drafts. The ones in between will flesh out the characters and maybe I'll check my research. ~ Colleen McCullough

On prend l'essence de la vie dans la ville." "One captures the essence of life in the city," the French said. To be in Paris was to have the world at one's feet - "le monde à ses pieds. ~ David McCullough

Charles Sumner; A Smacking breeze has sprung up, and we shall part this company soon; and then for the Atlantic! Farewell then, my friends, my pursuits, my home, my country! Each bellying wave on its rough crest carries me away. The rocking vessel impedes my pen. And now, as my head begins slightly to reel, my imagination entertains the glorious prospects before me ... ~ David McCullough

("It seemed to be the principle employment of both armies to look at each other with spyglasses," wrote the eminent Loyalist Peter Oliver, former chief justice of the province.) ~ David McCullough

Three things ruin a man," Harry would tell a reporter long afterward. "Power, money, and women. "I never wanted power," he said. "I never had any money, and the only woman in my life is up at the house right now." On ~ David McCullough

In early draft it never satisfied me, and that was when it clicked into place and it went so well as a diary. ~ Colleen McCullough

The chief need was skill rather than machinery. It was impossible to fly without both knowledge and skill - of this Wilbur was already certain - and skill came only from experience - experience in the air. ~ David McCullough

He owe his wife a debt he couldn't hope to pay with any coin save one: open the cage and let the bird fly. ~ Colleen McCullough

The pull, the attraction of history, is in our human nature. What makes us tick? Why do we do what we do? How much is luck the deciding factor? ~ David McCullough

There are people who are trying to write history for the general reader who can be quite tedious. 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. ~ David McCullough

I've always been dissatisfied, I know that. But lately I find that I reek of discontentment. It fills my throat, and it floods my brain. And sometimes I fear there is no longer a dream, but only the discontentment. ~ David McCullough

And it's so easy because you become so self-conscious and so intellectual and so analytical about it in the long run that you lose that wonderful sort of ego that you have that says, 'Oh, goddamn it, I don't care; I love it anyway; I'm going to do it! ~ David McCullough

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. ~ David McCullough

Your education never stops and college is just the beginning. You come out of college with a huge advantage in that you've ideally and more times than not you've come out with a love of learning and that's what matters above all. ~ David McCullough

How can we know who we are and where we are going if we don't know anything about where we have come from and what we have been through, the courage shown, the costs paid, to be where we are? ~ David McCullough

Because she is not small. She is not weak. She will never, ever be feebleminded,
And above all, she is outraged.
The world will tell you not to be outraged, love. They will tell you to sit quietly, be kind. Be a lady.
And when they do? Be Judith instead. ~ Joy McCullough

Take the teacher not the course. Find out who the great professors are - the great teachers - and take their courses because a subject that you may not think you're interested in may turn out to be infinitely fascinating because of the way it's taught. ~ David McCullough

Rather than literally burning the midnight oil, which he judged to be unhealthy, John Adams advised his son to make the most of college by developing an inquisitive outlook that would prompt him to get to know the most exceptional scholars and question them closely. Ask them about their tutors, manner of teaching. Observe what books lie on their tables. Fall into questions of literature, science, or what you will. ~ David McCullough

Hardly a soul spoke a word of English. All this they had been forewarned about, but the difference between what one had been told and what one came to understand firsthand was enormous. ~ David McCullough

Many of them were familiar from childhood with the fables of La Fontaine. Or they had read Voltaire or Racine or Molière in English translations. But that was about the sum of any familiarity they had with French literature. And none, of course, could have known in advance that the 1830s and '40s in Paris were to mark the beginning of the great era of Victor Hugo, Balzac, George Sand, and Baudelaire, not to say anything of Delacroix in painting or Chopin and Liszt in music. ~ David McCullough

That's the purpose of old age ... To give us a breathing space before we die, in which to see why we did what we did. ~ Colleen McCullough

Seen under the microscope, Stegomyia is a creature of striking beauty. Its general color is dark gray, but the thorax is marked with a silvery-white lyre-shaped pattern; the abdomen is banded with silvery-white stripes and the six-jointed legs are striped alternately with black and pure white. Among mosquitoes Stegomyia is the height of elegance. ~ David McCullough

I write on the typewriter. I like it because I like the feeling of making something with my hands. I like pressing the key and a letter comes up and is printed on a piece of paper. I can understand that. ~ David McCullough

Duty, the most indecent of all obsessions, was only another name for love. ~ Colleen McCullough

Roosevelt loved the subtleties of human relations ... He was sensitive to nuances in a way that Harry Truman never was and never would be. Truman, with his rural Missouri background, and partly too, because of the limits of his education, was inclined to see things in far simpler terms, as right or wrong, wise or foolish. He dealt little in abstractions. ~ David McCullough

Once upon a time in the dead of winter in the Dakota Territory, Theodore Roosevelt took off in a makeshift boat down the Little Missouri River in pursuit of a couple of thieves who had stolen his prized rowboat. After several days on the river, he caught up and got the draw on them with his trusty Winchester, at which point they surrendered. Then Roosevelt set off in a borrowed wagon to haul the thieves cross-country to justice. They headed across the snow-covered wastes of the Badlands to the railhead at Dickinson, and Roosevelt walked the whole way, the entire 40 miles. It was an astonishing feat, what might be called a defining moment in Roosevelt's eventful life. But what makes it especially memorable is that during that time, he managed to read all of Anna Karenina. I often think of that when I hear people say they haven't time to read. ~ David McCullough

Today's prime fact is war," Henry Stimson had said at the start of one Interim ~ David McCullough

Read. Read. Read. Read. Read great books. Read poetry, history, biography. Read the novels that have stood the test of time. And read closely. ~ David McCullough

Read somewhat in the English poets every day. You will find them elegant, entertaining and constructive companions through your whole life. ~ David McCullough

No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read.
(The Course of Human Events, NEH Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities 2003) ~ David McCullough

The bird with the thorn in its breast, it follows an immutable law; it is driven by it knows not what to impale itself, and die singing. At the very instant the thorn enters there is no awareness in it of the dying to come; it simply sings and sings until there is not the life left to utter another note. But we, when we put the thorns in our breasts, we know. We understand. And still we do it. Still we do it. ~ Colleen McCullough

Liberty is a romantic notion to me. ~ Dawn McCullough-White

Settle steadily down as a staid, sensible piece of paper ought to do, but it insists on contravening every recognized rule of decorum, turning over and darting hither and thither in the most erratic manner, much after the style of an untrained horse. This was the kind of horse, he said, that men had to learn to manage in order to fly, and there were two ways: One is to get on him and learn by actual practice how each motion and trick may be best met; the other is to sit on a fence and watch the beast a while, and then retire to the house and at leisure figure out the best way of overcoming his jumps and kicks. The latter system is the safest, but the former, on the whole, turns out the larger proportion of good riders. ~ David McCullough

I stopped this one about two months before federation and I want the next one to be more political. It will deal with the formation of white Australian policy and things like that. ~ Colleen McCullough

I suppose it isn't fair to fault my father, though he's the one who used it, moved it, claimed it as his own because of course, he did. That's just the way of things, I beg and fight and scrape for scraps while he just has to glance upon a thing to make it his. ~ Joy McCullough

I want to know what they look like, their height, and colouring, physique and speech pattens. ~ Colleen McCullough

With the situation as gray as it could be, no one was more conspicuous in his calm presence of mind than Washington. They must be "cool but determined" he had told the men before the battle, when spirits were high. Now, in the face of catastrophe, he was demonstrating what he meant by his own example. Whatever anger or torment or despair he felt, he kept to himself. ~ David McCullough

I have an editor in my head, that's why I can't read Harry Potter, because Rowling is such a lousy writer. ~ Colleen McCullough

Far from the cinematic drama of hospital emergency rooms, Slow Medicine embraces the unsung work of daily attention that is the greatest need and firmest foundation for longevity and quality of life at the farthest reach of age. Excellent chronic care attends to the day-to-day needs and conditions of the patient - by offering emotional support and social stimulation, supplying better nutrition, easing chronic skin and nail conditions, and making sleeping, moving, bathing, dressing, and voiding easier. Slow Medicine is the careful practice that most reliably sustains fragile patterns of well-being. This foundation for better elder care strengthens, rather than replaces, the selective use of high-tech care. During the time of the writing of this book, I have lived the ~ Dennis Mccullough

Elizabeth Blackwell, "with a very slender purse and few introductions of any value," found herself in the "unknown world" of Paris. What made her situation different from that of other American visitors was her profession. She was a doctor - the first American woman to have become a doctor. ~ David McCullough

To hold the reader's attention, you have to bring the person who's reading the book inside the experience of the time: What was it like to have been alive then? What were these people like as human beings? ~ David McCullough

He wasn't a hero, or an original thinker. His beliefs were their beliefs, their way of talking was his way of talking. He was on their side. He was one of them. If he stumbled over a phrase or a name, he would grin and try again, and they would smile with ~ David McCullough

A man who works for the immediate present and its immediate rewards is nothing but a fool. ~ David McCullough

Prayer is being consciously in God's presence, focusing our eyes on him, on who he is, on what he's like. My prayer took the form of singing hymns and songs of praise, sitting, kneeling, standing, hands raised high, or falling on my face before God. We are flesh and blood. We must pray with our bodies. My prayer was also contemplation, meditation, listening to God's voice, sometimes writing letters to God, even e-mails. ~ Linda McCullough Moore

When a bill was put before the state legislature in Jefferson City that would have prohibited anyone who owned a saloon from holding elective office and reporters asked what he thought of it, Alderman Jim said probably the bill was intended as a way of improving the reputation of saloonkeepers. ~ David McCullough

Nothing ever invented can you a bigger life than a book. ~ David McCullough

I steer my bark with hope in the head, leaving fear astern. Their ~ David McCullough

Remember all men would be tyrants if they could - from a poem by Daniel Defoe, as written by Abigail to John Adams ~ David McCullough

One might also say that history is not about the past. If you think about it, no one ever lived in the past. Washington, Jefferson, John Adams, and their contemporaries didn't walk about saying, "Isn't this fascinating living in the past! Aren't we picturesque in our funny clothes!" They lived in the present. The difference is it was their present, not ours. They were caught up in the living moment exactly as we are, and with no more certainty of how things would turn out than we have. ~ David McCullough

And gradually his memory slipped a little, as memories do, even those with so much love attached to them; as if there is an unconscious healing process within the mind which mends up in spite of our desperate determination never to forget. ~ Colleen McCullough

Piazzas, churches named for a teenager who gave life to the Christ. Sculptures, paintings, frescoes devoted to her holiness. But the only thing about her we remember, she was a virgin. ~ Joy McCullough

. I want to say many things I must omit. It is not fit to wake the soul by tender strokes of art, or to ruminate upon happiness we might enjoy, lest absences become intolerable. ~ David McCullough

We learn much by tribulation, and by adversity our hearts are made better. ~ David McCullough

No bird soars in a calm. ~ David McCullough

Public business, my son, must always be done by somebody. It will be done by somebody or other. If wise men decline it, others will not; if honest men refuse it, others will not. ~ David McCullough

You say you love me, but you have no idea what love is; you're just mouthing words you've memorized because you think they sound good! ~ Colleen McCullough

But work used to be the lot of every man, and now it is rapidly becoming an aristocratic privilege. Men nowadays are more often paid not to work. ~ Colleen McCullough

About these scientists," Truman said, "we need men with great intellects, need their ideas. But we need to balance them with other kinds of people, too. ~ David McCullough

I love Dickens. I love the way he sets a scene. ~ David McCullough

There's no such thing as a foreseeable future. ~ David McCullough

Of those who had been eyewitnesses at Kill Devil Hills the morning of the 17th, John T. Daniels was much the most effusive about what he had felt. "I like to think about it now," he would say in an interview years later. "I like to think about that first airplane the way it sailed off in the air . . . as pretty as any bird you ever laid your eyes on. I don't think I ever saw a prettier sight in my life." But it would never have happened, Daniels also stressed, had it not been for the two "workingest boys" he ever knew. It wasn't luck that made them fly; it was hard work and common sense; they put their whole heart and soul and all their energy into an idea and they had the faith. ~ David McCullough

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. ~ David McCullough

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 ~ David McCullough

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. ~ David McCullough

Books can change your life. Some of the most influential people in our lives are characters we meet in books. ~ David McCullough

We are raising a generation of young Americans who are, to a very large degree, historically illiterate. It's not their faults. There's no problem about enlisting their interest in history. None. The problem is the teachers so often have no history in their background. ~ David McCullough

If the attitude of the teacher toward the material is positive, enthusiastic, committed and excited, the students get that. If the teacher is bored, students get that and they get bored, quickly, instinctively. ~ David McCullough

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

Lord Bolingbroke, who was an eighteenth-century political philosopher, called history "philosophy taught with examples. ~ David McCullough

So, it was done, the break was made, in words at least: on July 2, 1776, in Philadelphia, the American colonies declared independence. If not all thirteen clocks had struck as one, twelve had, and with the other silent, the effect was the same.
It was John Adams, more than anyone, who had made it happen. Further, he seems to have understood more clearly than any what a momentous day it was and in the privacy of two long letters to Abigail, he poured out his feelings as did no one else:
The second day of July 1776 will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the Day of Deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever more. ~ David McCullough

We are all what we are, in large degree, because of others who have helped, coached, taught, counseled, who set a standard by example, who've taken an interest in our interests, opened doors, opened our minds, helped us see, who gave encouragement when we needed it, who reprimanded or prodded when we needed it, and at critical moments, inspired. ~ David McCullough

Although the facts are technically fiction. But they're only called fiction by the people who don't know the facts. ~ Kathy McCullough

Read. Read every chance you get. Read to keep growing. Read history. Read poetry. Read for pure enjoyment. Read a book called Life on a Little Known Planet. It's about insects. It will make you feel better. ~ David McCullough

By reaching for the stars, Jefferson gave us all the impulse. He ~ David McCullough

Sisters share a bond unlike any other – thornier, but also tender, full of possibility. ~ Joy McCullough

the evolutions of the bird on the wing are quite as safe and infinitely more rapid and beautiful than the movements of either the quadruped on the land or the fish in the water. ~ David McCullough

Success is failure with the dirt brushed off. ~ Mamie McCullough

People often ask me if I'm working on a book. That's not how I feel. I feel like I work in a book. It's like putting myself under a spell. And this spell, if you will, is so real to me that if I have to leave my work for a few days, I have to work myself back into the spell when I come back. It's almost like hypnosis. ~ David McCullough

No bird soars in a calm. WILBUR WRIGHT ~ David McCullough

Every line from you exhilarates my spirits and gives me a glow of pleasure, but your kind congratulations are solid comfort to my heart. The little strength of mind and the considerable strenght of body that I once possessed appear to be all gone, but while I breathe I shall be your friend. ~ David McCullough

If we think back through our own lives, the subjects that you liked best in school almost certainly were taught by the teachers you liked best. And the teacher you liked best was the teacher who cared about the subject she taught. ~ David McCullough

Washington had performed his role to perfection. It was no enough that a leader look the part; by Washington's rules, he must know how to act it with self-command and precision. ~ David McCullough

The man who wishes to keep at the problem long enough to really learn anything positively must not take dangerous risks. Carelessness and overconfidence are usually more dangerous than deliberately accepted risks. ~ David McCullough

The important thing is that the President be saved from his friends. Bill Hassett urged Truman to rid himself of Boyle without delay. "Your friends will destroy you," Hassett pleaded. "It's all right, Bill," Truman said, as if trying to calm a child. "It's all right." Truman ~ David McCullough

The author perceptively outlines what might be an underrated aspect of his subject and of many others whose public achievements are of note – a "gift for friendship". McCullough says Adams, despite his towering intellect and curmudgeonly demeanor, had a soft heart for other people and a genuine interest in their particulars. ~ David McCullough

From ancient times and into the Middle Ages, man had dreamed of taking to the sky, of soaring into the blue like the birds. One savant in Spain in the year 875 is known to have covered himself with feathers in the attempt. Others devised wings of their own design and jumped from rooftops and towers - some to their deaths - in Constantinople, Nuremberg, Perugia. ~ David McCullough

Since September 11, it seems to me that never in our lifetime, except possibly in the early stages of World War II, has it been clearer that we have as a source of strength, a source of direction, a source of inspiration - our story. ~ David McCullough

I had been writing for about twelve years. I knew pretty well how you could find things out, but I had never been trained in an academic way how to go about the research. ~ David McCullough

Corunda Base Hospital itself continued to function on doctors, nurses, domestic staff, food preparers, and ancillary staff in the same old way, so that the patients lived (or died) in relative ignorance of the drama going on at an executive level. Indeed, it was a rare patient even knew that a hospital had executives. ~ Colleen McCullough

My name is Bernard Jeffrey McCullough, but people know me as Bernie Mac. My mama, God rest her soul - she used to call me Beanie. Used to say, 'Don't you worry about Beanie. Beanie gonna be just fine. Beanie gonna surprise everyone.' ~ Bernie Mac

Why shouldn't the living cords which lace our being together flick softly against a loved one in the very moment of their unraveling?...Sometimes, all the miles between are as nothing, sometimes, they are narrowed to the little silence between the beats of a heart. ~ Colleen McCullough

power is not the point, responsibility is the point and at the heart of responsibility always are moral choices. In what we do, in what we say, what we stand for, we must feel, as did the founders of the nation, as did the founders of this college, that it is the example of America that matters. So ~ David McCullough