The Course of Human Events Quotes

“For a free, self-governing people, something more than a vague familiarity with history is essential, if we are to hold on to and sustain our freedom.”
― David McCullough, The Course of Human Events

“LORD BOLINGBROKE, the eighteenth-century political philosopher, said that “history is philosophy teaching by examples.” Thucydides is reported to have said much the same thing two thousand years earlier. Jefferson”
― David McCullough, The Course of Human Events

“Why would anyone wish to be provincial in time, any more than being tied down to one place through life, when the whole reach of the human drama is there to experience in some of the greatest books ever written.”
― David McCullough, The Course of Human Events

“The Revolution was another of the darkest, most uncertain of times and the longest war in American history, until the Vietnam War. It lasted eight and a half years, and Adams, because of his unstinting service to his country, was separated from his family nearly all that time, much to his and their distress. In a letter from France he tried to explain to them the reason for such commitment. I must study politics and war [he wrote] that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study paintings, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.”
― David McCullough, The Course of Human Events

“I must study politics and war [he wrote] that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study paintings, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.”
― David McCullough, The Course of Human Events

“Jefferson saw history as largely a chronicle of mistakes to be avoided.”
― David McCullough, The Course of Human Events

“When the world is storm-driven and the bad that happens and the worse that threatens are so urgent as to shut out everything else from view, then we need to know all the strong fortresses of the spirit which men have built through the ages.”
― David McCullough, The Course of Human Events

“Yet there is hardly a more appealing description of the Enlightenment outlook on life and learning than a single sentence in a popular novel of the day, A Sentimental Journey, by Laurence Sterne. What a large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life by him who interests his heart in everything.”
― David McCullough, The Course of Human Events

“to countenance and inculcate the principles of humanity and general benevolence, public and private charity, industry and frugality, honesty [we will teach honesty] . . . sincerity, [and, please note] good humor, and all social affections, and generous sentiments among the people.”
― David McCullough, The Course of Human Events

“And he goes on to define what he means by education. It is literature and the sciences, yes, but much more: agriculture, the arts, commerce, trades, manufacturers, “and a natural history of the country.” It shall be the duty, he continues,”
― David McCullough, The Course of Human Events

“and among the different orders of the people [that is, everyone], it shall be the duty [not something they might consider, but the duty] of legislatures and magistrates in all future periods of this commonwealth to cherish the interests and literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them . . . public schools, and grammar schools in the towns.”
― David McCullough, The Course of Human Events

“Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties. [Which is to say that there must be wisdom, knowledge, and virtue or all aspirations for the good society will come to nothing.] And as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in various parts of the country,”
― David McCullough, The Course of Human Events

“minded statement of far-reaching consequence was committed to paper. It was not the decree of a king or a sultan or emperor or czar, or something enacted by a far-distant parliament. It was a declaration of political faith and brave intent freely arrived at by an American congress. And that was something entirely new under the sun.”
― David McCullough, The Course of Human Events

“The scene proclaims that in Philadelphia in the year 1776 a momentous, high-”
― David McCullough, The Course of Human Events

“sight of values that are stable, which no selfish and timorous preoccupations can make waver, because they are the hard-won permanent possessions of humanity. . . . When the world is storm-driven and the bad that happens and the worse that threatens are so urgent as to shut out everything else from view, then we need to know all the strong fortresses of the spirit which men have built through the ages.”
― David McCullough, The Course of Human Events

“was then, in 1942, that the classical scholar Edith Hamilton issued an expanded edition of her book, The Greek Way, in which, in the preface, she wrote the following: I have felt while writing these new chapters a fresh realization of the refuge and strength the past can be to us in the troubled present. . . . Religion is the great stronghold for the untroubled vision of the eternal, but there are others too. We have many silent sanctuaries in which we can find breathing space to free ourselves from the personal, to rise above our harassed and perplexed minds and catch”
― David McCullough, The Course of Human Events

“But I don’t think history should”
― David McCullough, The Course of Human Events