The power to command frequently causes failure to think.
BARBARA TUCHMANThe power to command frequently causes failure to think.
BARBARA TUCHMANTo a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse. They are of two kinds: the library of published material, books, pamphlets, periodicals, and the archive of unpublished papers and documents.
BARBARA TUCHMANBelgium, where there occurred one of the rare appearances of the hero in history, was lifted above herself by the uncomplicated conscience of her King and, faced with the choice to acquiesce or resist, took less than three hours to make her decision, knowing it might be mortal.
BARBARA TUCHMANHonor wears different coats to different eyes.
BARBARA TUCHMANNo female iniquity was more severely condemned than the habit of plucking eyebrows and the hairline to heighten the forehead.
BARBARA TUCHMANWoman was the Church’s rival, the temptress, the distraction, the obstacle to holiness, the Devil’s decoy.
BARBARA TUCHMANNothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.
BARBARA TUCHMANThe social damage was not in the failure but in the undertaking, which was expensive. The cost of war was the poison running through the 14th century.
BARBARA TUCHMANThe conduct of war was so much more interesting than its prevention.
BARBARA TUCHMANRussians, in the knowledge of inexhaustible supplies of manpower, are accustomed to accepting gigantic fatalities with comparative calm.
BARBARA TUCHMANTo put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup.
BARBARA TUCHMANTo a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.
BARBARA TUCHMANDiplomacy means all the wicked devices of the Old World, spheres of influence, balances of power, secret treaties, triple alliances, and, during the interim period, appeasement of Fascism.
BARBARA TUCHMANWisdom – meaning judgment acting on experience, common sense, available knowledge, and a decent appreciation of probability.
BARBARA TUCHMANFateful moments tend to evoke grandeur of speech, especially in French.
BARBARA TUCHMANWhen commerce with Moslems flourished, zeal for their massacre declined.
BARBARA TUCHMAN