A Quote by David McCullough
History is not just about dates and quotations. And it's not just about politics, the military and social issues, though much of it of course is about that. It's about everything. It's about life history. It's human. And we have to see it that way. We have to teach it that way. We have to read it that way. It's about art, music, literature, money, science, love - the human experience.
Quote Topics
Quote Author
Related Quotes
I feel very strongly that history is about everything. It isn't just about politics or the military or social issues. If art, music, engineering, science, medicine, finance, the world of architecture and technology - if those are left out, then you're not getting a full sense of the human condition. History is human and we human beings are involved in all kinds of things and that's part of our humanity.
Music just gives me so much energy and inspiration. Music and literature in a way probably influence me more than cinema does because they're different forms and yet related. I probably know as much about music history as I do about the history of cinema.
Of course, one way of thinking about all of life and civilization is as being about how the world registers and processes information. Certainly that's what sex is about; that's what history is about.
The way they taught history in schools was not appealing. They stressed wars and dates. They left the people out. I was attracted to history by the need to know about the people. In China, I went to a British school, and we just learned about kings and queens. Back in America, I had the regular social studies curriculum.
The two most important things is, one, the music in my life, and the family. It's somehow connected because music is about human beings, about love, about hate, about everything that happens in life.
The thing about writing or making art is that I'm not thinking about that stuff while I'm doing it. Like the driver's ed kid, in retrospect I see that that was meaningful, and I felt close to him in that way, but at the time I just thought it was fun to draw, and that's all it was. I think that's what's weird about life and about making art. You have to talk about it later. I guess I should be prepared to talk about it now. That is why I'm here. But again, pass.
Nature is full of drama. I know nothing about biology, about birds, about insects, about the details of politics. I just make movies about human interest stories.
It also happens that I don't actually teach about the stuff I make things about. I'm not a film history teacher. In that way, it's also a release. But the ideas that I talk about in the movie are the same I talk about in school.
Long ago, during my apprenticeship in the wine trade, I learned that wine is more than the sum of its parts, and more than an expression of its physical origin. The real significance of wine as the nexus of just about everything became clearer to me when I started writing about it. The more I read, the more I traveled, and the more questions I asked, the further I was pulled into the realms of history and economics, politics, literature, food, community, and all else that affects the way we live. Wine, I found, draws on everything and leads everywhere.
I love silence. And one of the paradoxes about the way I live and also about my work is that definitely one of the reasons I went into music, and especially into composing is that I love setting up an environment where I can be by myself for long periods of time and have everything as quiet as possible, either to think about sound, or to think about ideas, or just to focus on things that are important to me.
I studied art history and philosophy and took economics and political science classes. I just took whatever I wanted and I didn't worry about grades and I read and learned a lot, and I didn't have much of a social life, so it was deeply absorbing.
You can't write about history without writing about politics at some point. History is about movements of people. 'What is criminality and what is government' is a theme that runs through every history.
It seems to me that we make a terrible mistake in talking about Trump as some kind of essence of evil. Trump is symptomatic of something much deeper in the culture, whether we're talking about the militarization of everyday life, whether we're talking about the criminalization of social problems, or whether we're talking about the way in which money has absolutely corrupted politics. This is a country that is sliding into authoritarianism.
Do I want a shot at the belt? Yes, of course I do. Put it this way: I am Barry Sanders on the Detroit Lions. You love to watch me, but you'll never see me play in the Super Bowl. It's just one of those things. It's about politics. It's not about fighting.
What's interesting about science is that we're constantly discovering new things about the universe, about ourselves, about our bodies, about diseases, about the possibilities of the future. It's amazing. Science is one of the coolest things about being a human being - without a doubt.
I think all writing is about writing. All writing is a way of going out and exploring the world, of examining the way we live, and therefore any words you put down on the page about life will, at some level, also be words about words. It's still amazing, though, how many poems can be read as being analogous to the act of writing a poem. "Go to hell, go into detail, go for the throat" is certainly about writing, but it's also hopefully about a way of living.
Related Authors
Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes
French
Historian
Daniel J. Boorstin Quotes
American
Historian
Edward Gibbon Quotes
English
Historian
Hannah Arendt Quotes
German
Historian
Henry Adams Quotes
American
Historian
Herodotus Quotes
Greek
Historian
Howard Zinn Quotes
American
Historian
Linda Colley Quotes
British
Historian
Livy Quotes
Roman
Historian
Michel Foucault Quotes
French
Historian
Robert Dallek Quotes
American
Historian
Sallust Quotes
Roman
Historian
Tacitus Quotes
Roman
Historian
Tariq Ali Quotes
Pakistani
Historian
Thucydides Quotes
Greek
Historian
Will Durant Quotes
American
Historian