A nation that forgets its past can function no better than an individual with amnesia.
David McCulloughThe talent, including the talent for history - and I do think there are people who just have a talent for it, the way you have a talent for public speaking or music or whatever - it shouldn't be allowed to lie dormant. It should be brought alive.
David McCulloughI 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 McCulloughThe preparations were elaborate and mammoth in scale, and Washington threw himself into the effort, demanding that not an hour be lost.
David McCulloughYou 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