"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..."
- David McCullough
"Morality only is eternal. All the rest is balloon and bubble from the cradle to the grave."
"Let the children have their night of fun and laughter. Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play. Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the..."
"Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard.", July/Aug. 2002, Vol. 23/No. 4)"
"No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read.", NEH Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities 2003)"
"History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are. "
"Any nation that expects to be ignorant and free," Jefferson said, "expects what never was and never will be." And if the gap between the educated and the uneducated in America continues to grow as it ..."
"The more Adams thought about the future of his country, the more convinced he became that it rested on education. Before any great things are accomplished, he wrote to a correspondent, a memorable cha..."
"Remove yourself, sir!"
"Nothing ever invented provides such sustenance, such infinite reward for time spent, as a good book."