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
Read. Read every chance you get. Read to keep growing. Read history. Read poetry. Read for pure enjoyment. Read a book called Life on a Little Known Planet. It's about insects. It will make you feel better.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Reading is essential for personal growth, enjoyment, and understanding life.
In this quote, David McCullough emphasizes the transformative power of reading by highlighting its various benefits, such as personal growth, enjoyment, and learning from diverse subjects, including history and poetry. He suggests that reading can enhance our understanding of life and even improve our mood, encouraging us to make it a habitual practice.
Themes
ReadingGrowthEducationBooksEnjoyment
In practice
Example use cases
Use this quote in a motivational speech about the importance of reading.
More from David Mccullough
All quotes →There is only one person who can measure your success. That person is you.
David McculloughRead
I just thank my father and mother, my lucky stars, that I had the advantage of an education in the humanities.
David McculloughRead
Napoleon could never imagine that some people loved their country as much as he loved his own.
David McculloughRead
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.
David McculloughRead
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 McculloughRead
Similar quotes
Some of the most famous books are the least worth reading. Their fame was due to their having done something that needed to be doing in their day. The work is done and the virtue of the book has expired.
MoliereRead
There may be frugality which is not economy. A community, that withholds the means of education from its children, withholds the bread of life and starves their souls.
Horace MannRead
Whatever the skill of any country may be in the sciences, it is from its excellence in polite learning alone that it must expect a character from posterity.
Oliver GoldsmithRead
The better part of every man's education is that which he gives himself.
James Russell LowellRead
The greatest obstacle to those who hope to reform American education is complacency.
Diane RavitchRead
If the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead