All the money anyone needs is just enough to prevent one from being a burden to others. -Bishop Milton Wright

— David McCullough

A man who will steal for me will steal from me." Theodore Roosevelt, dismissing on the spot one of his best cowhands who was about to claim for his boss an unmarked animal.

— David McCullough

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 is in our time, as fast as or faster than the gap between the rich and the poor, the gap between the educated and the uneducated is going to be of greater consequence and the more serious threat to our way of life. We must not, by any means, misunderstand that.

— David McCullough

A veteran artist counsels a less experienced one to start a painting using colors in the middle range so that the painter can move to more extreme colors as the work progresses.

— David McCullough

Curiosity is what separates us from the cabbages. It's acceleration. The more we know, the more we want to know.

— David McCullough

Government is nothing more than the combined force of society or the united power of the multitude for the peace, order, safety, good, and happiness of the people... There is no king or queen bee distinguished from all the others by size or figure or beauty and variety of colors in the human hive. No man has yet produced any revelation from heaven in his favor, any divine communication to govern his fellow men. Nature throws us all into the world equal and alike... The preservation of liberty depends upon the intellectual and moral character of the people. As long as knowledge and virtue are diffused generally among the body of a nation it is impossible they should be enslaved. Ambition is one of the more ungovernable passions of the human heart. The love of power is insatiable and uncontrollable... There is a danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living WTH power to endanger public liberty.

— David McCullough

History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.

— David McCullough

History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.

— David McCullough

In America, applause is won only by physical exertion.

— David McCullough

In an exhibition wherein paintings of nudes were commonplace, that of Madame Gateau in her black evening dress was considered scandalously erotic. -from The Greater Journey

— David McCullough