Quote of the Day (David McCullough, on ‘Where We Have Come From and What We Have Been Through’)

“How can we know who we are and where we are going if we don't know anything about where we have come from and what we have been through, the courage shown, the costs paid, to be where we are?”—Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough (1933-2022), Brave Companions: Portraits in History (1991)

Quote of the Day (David McCullough, on History As ‘Something Someone Would Want To Read’)

“There should be no hesitation ever about giving anyone a book to enjoy, at any age. There should be no hesitation about teaching future teachers with books they will enjoy. No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read."—Pulitzer Prize-winning American historian David McCullough, “The Course of Human Events” (National Endowment for the Humanities, Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, 2003)

This is an especially important consideration as we enter the Fourth of July weekend…

Quote of the Day (David McCullough, on Why ‘History Ought to be a Source of Pleasure’)

“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.”—Historian David McCullough, in an interview with Bruce Cole, former chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, quoted in “Conversation: McCullough—A Visit with Historian David McCullough,” Humanities, May/June 2003

Photo of the Day: David McCullough Bridge, Pittsburgh

Two years ago, when I happened to be overnight visiting in town, one of Pittsburgh’s greatest bridges was renamed in honor of one of its most famous sons. The 16st Bridge was rechristened the David McCullough Bridge, in honor of the great historian-biographer (Harry Truman, John Adams, and The Great Bridge, about the Brooklyn Bridge). The ceremony took place on his 80^th birthday. I took this photo that weekend, on the day before the big event.

This became the fourth major bridge across the Allegheny River renamed after a famous person connected to the city, following baseball great Roberto Clemente, artist Andy Warhol and environmental pioneer Rachel Carson.

“I learned how to tell a story at my family’s dinner table in Pittsburgh,” McCullough told Marc Myers of The Wall Street Journal back in May, “where my parents and my maternal grandmother told stories about World War I, the city’s terrible floods, violent labor strikes and family eccentrics. I listened carefully and wound up with an appreciation for history.”

Quote of the Day (David McCullough, on Interesting Material for His Books)

“I want to find out. There isn’t anything in the world that isn’t inherently interesting—if only someone will explain it to you in English, if only someone will frame it in a story.” —Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer David McCullough, quoted by Marie Arana in The Writing Life: Writers On How They Think And Work, edited by Marie Arana (2003)

Quote of the Day (Saint-Exupery, Offering One of James Dean’s Favorite Quotes)

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”— Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince 

This past weekend, I heard historian David McCullough cite this quote in a lecture broadcast on C-Span. It is a marvelous refutation of the materialist philosophy that dominated so much of the late 19th and 20th centuries—and which still bedevils us, in one form or another, today. 

 A few years ago, a PBS “American Masters” documentary, “James Dean: Sense Memories,” ended with a haunting recollection that the hugely influential Rebel Without a Cause actor loved this modern fable. In fact, only 900 feet from the site of his fatal car accident on Highway 46 East in California, this quotation is carved on a plaque erected by a fan in memory of Dean. 

The creator of one of the best-loved books of the last century, Antoine de Saint-Exupery was also one of the most heroic figures of WWII, fighting for the Resistance as a reconnaissance pilot—someone who had even pulled strings to get into the fighting when it appeared that his age and weight would sideline him. His 1944 disappearance on a mission long ranked as one of the most enduring mysteries of the aeronautical age. Speculation raged that he’d lost control of the plane, committed suicide, or been shot down. 

Last year, courtesy of a French diver, wreckage of his plane was recovered, seemingly confirming the last hunch—and bringing added guilt to a former Luftwaffe pilot who believed that he’d shot down the aviator author he’d idolized.