A biography for David McCulloughhasn’t been written yet.
“You can't be a full participant in our democracy if you don't know our history.”
“Indeed, bribery, favoritism, and corruption in a great variety of forms were rampant not only in politics, but in all levels of society.”
“The source of our suffering has been our timidity. We have been afraid to think....Let us dare to read, think, speak, write.”
“All the money anyone needs is just enough to prevent one from being a burden to others. -Bishop Milton Wright”
“When I began, I thought that the way one should work was to do all the research and then write the book.”
“When a friend of Abigail and John Adams was killed at Bunker Hill, Abigail's response was to write a letter to her husband and include these words, "My bursting heart must find vent at my pen.”
“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.”
“I would pay to do what I do if I had to.”
“May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.”
“No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to”
“I love all sides of the work but that doesn't mean it isn't hard.”
“You've got to marinate your head, in that time and culture.You've got to become them."(Speaking about researching, and reading, and immersing yourself in History)”
“Those for whom things came easily usually made less of an effort, not more.”
“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.”
“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 Milton's works enough to feel comfortable quoting them from memory.”
“I'm very aware how many distractions the reader has in life today, how many good reasons there are to put the book down.”
“Remove yourself, sir!”
“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.”
“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.”