But even if a person were ignorant of such things, the sight of a moving train held aloft above the great gorge at Niagara by so delicate a contrivance was, in the 1860’s, nothing short of miraculous. The bridge seemed to defy the most fundamental laws of nature. Something so slight just naturally ought to give way beneath anything so heavy. That it did not seemed pure magic.

— David McCullough

David McCullough Quotes

Among those who were about to stake so very much on him and his bridge, or who already had, there was not one who could honestly say he knew the man.

— David McCullough

The change from the crowded, stifling hot, noisy confines of the workspace at Dayton to the open reaches of sea and sky on the Outer Banks could hardly have been greater or more welcome. They loved Kitty Hawk. “Every year adds to our comprehension of the wonders of this place,” wrote Orville to Katharine soon after arrival.

— David McCullough

We learn much by tribulation, and by adversity our hearts are made better. -Bishop Milton Wright to Orville Wright, 20 Sept. 1908.

— David McCullough

Higher, Orville, higher!

— David McCullough

Wright died in his room at home at 7 Hawthorn Street at 3:15 in the morning, Thursday, May 30, 1912. He was forty-five years old.

— David McCullough

How unpardonable would it have been in you to have turned out a blockhead. How.

— David McCullough

Lord Bolingbroke, who was an eighteenth-century political philosopher, called history “philosophy taught with examples.

— David McCullough

The Democratic Party would win in November because the Democratic Party was the people’s party. The Republicans were the party of the privileged few, as always.

— David McCullough

The best dividends on the labor invested,” they said, “have invariably come from seeking more knowledge rather than more power.

— David McCullough

Even mighty states and kingdoms are not exempted. If we look into history, we shall find some nations rising from contemptible beginnings and spreading their influence, until the whole globe is subjected to their ways. When they have reached the summit of grandeur, some minute and unsuspected cause commonly affects their ruin, and the empire of the world is transferred to some other place. Immortal.

— David McCullough

It is almost a reconciliation to having my leg broken to contemplate the amount of reading I am going to do this summer. I am getting better fast and I am afraid I’ll get well so soon I won’t get to read enough.

— David McCullough

It must not remain our desire only to acquire the art of the bird,” Lilienthal had written. “It is our duty not to rest until we have attained a perfect scientific conception of the problem of flight.

— David McCullough

If ignorance could be banished from our land, a real millennium would commence. – EPHRAIM CUTLER.

— David McCullough

At one point an elderly resident Frenchman told him that if he persisted with his plan there would not be trees enough on the Isthmus to make the crosses to put over the graves of his laborers.

— David McCullough

Well, they’ve made a flight.

— David McCullough

I steer my bark with hope in the head, leaving fear astern.” Their.

— David McCullough

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

What had transpired that day in 1903, in the stiff winds and cold of the Outer Banks in less than two hours time, was one of the turning points in history, the beginning of change for the world far greater than any of those present could possibly have imagined.

— David McCullough

The letter was dated October 2. That night, as Orville later told the story, discussion in camp on aeronautical theory went on at such length that he indulged himself in more coffee than usual. Unable to sleep, he lay awake thinking about ways to achieve an even better system of control when suddenly he had an idea: the rear rudder, instead of being in a fixed position, should be hinged – movable.

— David McCullough

Gentlemen, enlisted men may be entitled to morale problems, but officers are not. I expect all officers to take care of their own morale. No one is taking care of my morale. – General George C. Marshall.

— David McCullough
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