David McCullough Quotes

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

David McCullough

• Past

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• There are hundreds of people running around with great voices. If they would study and develop them they could become great singers.

  

  Vaughn Monroe
  • People
  • Great
  • Running

• I've worked so hard since I was 18 years old, and I'd hate for the memories to be boiled down to being a Melania Trump impersonator.

  

  Laura Benanti
  • Hate
  • Memories
  • Trump

• Some people change when they think they're a star or something.

  

  Paris Hilton
  • People
  • Change
  • Star

• To me, doing a gay pride show is one of the most fun things. My first show that paid more than $10,000 was in a gay club on New Year's Eve in San Francisco.

  

  Queen Latifah
  • Fun
  • Gay
  • Pride

• You always need that spark of imagination. Sometimes I'm midway through a book before it happens. However, I don't wait for the muse to descend, I sit down every day and I work when I'm not delivering lambs on the farm.

  

  Barbara Kingsolver
  • Work
  • Book
  • Day

• Being a recognised face has its problems. I miss the freedom to go anywhere I want to.

  

  Nawazuddin Siddiqui
  • Want
  • Freedom
  • Problems

• We're not trying to reinvent the wheel; for any environmental organization to claim sole responsibility for any kind of victory is insane, because everybody attacks these problems as a group.

  

  Ted Danson
  • Trying
  • Responsibility
  • Organization

• Jazz has been such a force in music, that any musician, including classical composers, have been influenced, and obviously performers, also.

  

  Yo-Yo Ma
  • Music
  • Force
  • Jazz

• Loss of hope rather than loss of life is what decides the issues of war. But helplessness induces hopelessness.

  

  B. H. Liddell Hart
  • Life
  • War
  • Hope

• The cultural expectation should be if there's infidelity, the marriage is more important than fidelity.

  

  Dan Savage
  • Important
  • Marriage
  • Expectation

• I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.

  

  Nathan Hale
  • Life
  • Country
  • Regret

• Movies don't look hard, but figuring it out, getting the shape of it, getting everybody's character right and having it be funny, make sense and be romantic, it's creating a puzzle. Yes, having been a writer for so long, I have an awareness of when things are going awry, but it doesn't mean I know how to fix them.

  

  Nancy Meyers
  • Long
  • Character
  • Funny

• There are secrets at the heart of every story; there is something that must be uncovered or discovered, both by the reader and by the characters.

  

  Hannah Kent
  • Heart
  • Story
  • Secrets

• I joined the army on my seventeenth birthday, full of the romance of war after having read a lot of World War I British poetry and having seen a lot of post-World War II films. I thought the romantic presentations of war influenced my joining and my presentation of war to my younger siblings.

  

  Walter Dean Myers
  • World
  • War
  • Poetry

• Honestly I'm not a huge TV person. The only show that I've seen every episode of is 'Pretty Little Liars.' It's my favorite show. I wish I could get into other shows, but I just don't have time!

  

  Sabrina Carpenter
  • Time
  • Pretty
  • Wish

• Here in Canada, in the Western world, we are inside the walls. Outside the walls are the barbarians.

  

  Barbara Amiel
  • World
  • Canada
  • Walls

• Nothing is a better icebreaker than a great joke.

  

  Dane Cook
  • Great
  • Better
  • Nothing

• There appears to be something to do with vehicles and movement that stimulates my writing.

  

  Joanne Rowling
  • Writing
  • Something
  • Movement

• I'd say 'Codename Baboushka' has been a slightly more difficult process for me, but I think that's precisely because it's quite different to my usual fare. And even then, being difficult doesn't make me prefer it, or not, to anything else. I like a challenge.

  

  Antony Johnston
  • Different
  • Challenge

• It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.

  

  Lucius Annaeus Seneca

• I do love being onstage. And I've always loved playing a character and being watched doing that.

  

  Cecile McLorin Salvant
  • Love
  • Character

• Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim.

  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • Life
  • Power
  • Past

• I think my attitudes about the past are very traditional. You can't ignore history; you can't escape it even if you want to. You might as well know where you come from, and you might as well know that everything has been done in some shape or form.

  

  Frank Gehry
  • Done
  • History
  • Past

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

  

  David McCullough
  • Past