If you get down about the state of American culture, just remember there are still more public libraries in this country than there are McDonalds.
David McculloughRead
The pull, the attraction of history, is in our human nature. What makes us tick? Why do we do what we do? How much is luck the deciding factor?
Interpretation
This quote explores the intrinsic curiosity of humans regarding the motivations behind actions and the role of luck in history.
David McCullough's quote delves into the fundamental aspects of human nature that drive our interest in history. It suggests that understanding our motivations, the reasoning behind our actions, and the influence of chance events are vital to comprehending both individual behavior and the larger narrative of human history. It prompts reflection on how these elements shape our lives and the world around us.
In practice
During a history class discussion about human motivations and chance events.
If you get down about the state of American culture, just remember there are still more public libraries in this country than there are McDonalds.
There is only one person who can measure your success. That person is you.
I just thank my father and mother, my lucky stars, that I had the advantage of an education in the humanities.
Napoleon could never imagine that some people loved their country as much as he loved his own.
When the founders wrote about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they didn't mean longer vacations and more comfortable hammocks. They meant the pursuit of learning. The pursuit of improvement and excellence. In hard work is happiness.
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.
The good Bishop of Assisi expressed a sort of horror at the hard life which the Little Brothers lived at the Portiuncula, without comforts, without possessions, eating anything they could get and sleeping anyhow on the ground. St. Francis answered him with that curious and almost stunning shrewdness which the unworldly can sometimes wield like a club of stone. He said, 'If we had any possessions, we should need weapons and laws to defend them.
If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same race, creed and color, we would find some other causes for prejudice by noon.
I suddenly became strangely inebriated. The external world became changed as in a dream. Objects appeared to gain in relief; they assumed unusual dimensions; and colors became more glowing. Even self-perception and the sense of time were changed. When the eyes were closed, colored pictures flashed past in a quickly changing kaleidoscope. After a few hours, the not unpleasant inebriation, which had been experienced whilst I was fully conscious, disappeared. What had caused this condition?
You are making an inopportune rejection of what Nature has given you today, if all your mind is set on what men will say of you tomorrow.
The world dies over and over again, but the skeleton always gets up and walks.
Someone who can search for something is happy. Searching gives a meaning to life. Nowadays itβs not so easy to find something you might be looking for. The most important thing, however, is the search itself, the way you take. Itβs not so important where it leads. thatβs why my characters are always looking for something, maybe only a cat, a sheep or a wife, but that is at least the beginning of a story.
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