David McCullough: Take the teacher not the course. Find out who the g...

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

encouragement taken doors

Never assume that people in positions of responsibility are behaving responsibly.

David McCullough

assuming responsibility people

History is not just about dates and quotations. And it's not just about politics, the military and social issues, though much of it of course is about that. It's about everything. It's about life history. It's human. And we have to see it that way. We have to teach it that way. We have to read it that way. It's about art, music, literature, money, science, love - the human experience.

David McCullough

issues military art

History is not the story of heroes entirely. It is often the story of cruelty and injustice and shortsightedness. There are monsters, there is evil, there is betrayal. That's why people should read Shakespeare and Dickens as well as history ~~ they will find the best, the worst, the height of noble attainment and the depths of depravity.

David McCullough

betrayal reading book

You can't learn to play the piano without playing the piano, you can't learn to write without writing, and, in many ways, you can't learn to think without thinking. Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard.

David McCullough

play writing thinking

I feel that history is in many ways the most important of all subjects because it is about everything and because it's about who we are and how we came to be the way we are.

David McCullough

who-we-are important way

Climb the mountain so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.

David McCullough

famous-motivational mountain wisdom

You can make the argument that there's no such thing as the past. Nobody lived in the past. They lived in the present. It is their present, not our present, and they don't know how it's going to come out. They weren't just like we are because they lived in that very different time. You can't understand them if you don't understand how they perceived reality.

David McCullough

different reality past

Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love.

David McCullough

success motivational love

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

David McCullough

character book people

Love of learning will never let you down. You can have a quest for money, you can have a quest for power, you can have a quest for fame and they are sometimes gratifying and sometimes self-destructive. The love of learning is always gratifying and never self-destructive. The more educated, the more cultivated a society becomes, better off is everybody.

David McCullough

quests self sometimes

And read… read all the time… read as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect. Read as a nourishing staple of life.

David McCullough

principles self matter

I think the public library system is one of the most amazing American institutions. Free for everybody. If you ever get the blues about the status of American culture there are still more public libraries than there are McDonald's. During the worst of the Depression not one public library closed their doors.

David McCullough

mcdonalds doors thinking

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

degrees generations teacher

Nothing ever invented provides such sustenance, such infinite reward for time spent, as a good book.

David McCullough

rewards infinite book

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

alive responsibility art

Courage is contagious. If a leader shows courage, others get the idea.

David McCullough

contagious leader ideas

Develop and protect a moral sensibility and demonstrate the character to apply it. Dream big. Work hard. Think for yourself. Love everything you love, everyone you love, with all your might. And do so, please, with a sense of urgency, for every tick of the clock subtracts from fewer and fewer...

David McCullough

hard-work dream character

Spotting talent is one of the essential elements of great leadership.

David McCullough

great-leadership motivational inspirational

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

airplane distance war

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.