David McCullough Quotes

We learn history not in order to know how to behave or how to succeed, but to know who we are.

History matters.

A society that does not correctly interpret and appreciate its past cannot understand its present fortunes and adversities and can be caught unawares in a fast changing world.

History is the interpretation of the significance that the past has for us.

History isn’t just what happened before we came on the scene. We are a part of history..

Ancient histories provide windows to knowing current affairs.

Don't ever forget the history! It will make and change who we are!

No people can live in the past - not even in its own past. But if it no longer has a link with its history, it must of necessity perish. Persia, crowded with hardship and glory, ordeals and hopes. With the help of the Almighty, the lessons of the past constitute the best guide for the citizens of the future.

A people without a positive history is like a vehicle without an engine.

If you forget your history, you forget who you are.

One should live with history round one.

The passion for the past is clearly about more than market forces or government policies. History responds to a variety of needs, from greater understanding of ourselves and our world to answers about what to do.

Although I write to entertain, and try to keep my work free of didacticism, I do have a rather passionate belief in our need to be connected to - and to learn from - history.

The very concept of history implies the scholar and the reader. Without a generation of civilized people to study history, to preserve its records, to absorb its lessons and relate them to its own problems, history, too, would lose its meaning.

I think the history and the past we have is just an energy we've built up to do what we do now.

I think all of the secrets of the universe are revealed in history. We understand who we are by understanding where we've been and why we are the way we are, and where we come from.

When history is erased, people's moral values are also erased.

I think history is collective memories. In writing, I'm using my own memory, and I'm using my collective memory.

We've got to map all of our ancient history before it's gone because, let's face it, if we don't have a common heritage to share, something to get excited about, then what are we living for?

I believe that patterns tend to repeat themselves and there are connections between the past and the present. There is the old proverb that reads, 'You can't know where you're going if you don't know where you've been'. For me, history is like that. When you take history and combine it with myth, then you get mystery.

A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.

I subscribe to William Faulkner's' view that history is not just about what we were before but who we are now.

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.

In fact history does not belong to us; but we belong to it.

Until we perceive the meaning of our past, we remain the mere carriers of ideas, like the Nomads.