It is wiser, I believe, to arrive at theory by way of evidence rather than the other way around…. It is more rewarding, in any case, to assemble the facts first and, in the process of arranging them in narrative form, to discover a theory or a historical generalization emerging of its own accord.
BARBARA TUCHMANI ask myself, have nations ever declined from a loss of moral sense rather than from physical reasons or the pressure of barbarians? I think that they have.
More Barbara Tuchman Quotes
-
-
The reality of a question is inevitably more complicated than we would like to suppose.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
Chief among the forces affecting political folly is lust for power, named by Tacitus as “the most flagrant of all the passions.” Because it can only be satisfied by power over others, government is its favorite field of exercise.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
The power to command frequently causes failure to think.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
The writer’s object is – or should be – to hold the reader’s attention.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
Strong prejudices in an ill-formed mind are hazardous to government, and when combined with a position of power even more so.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
In the midst of events there is no perspective.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
To be a bestseller is not necessarily a measure of quality, but it is a measure of communication.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
The poets have familiarized more people with history than have the historians.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
The Germans could not get over the perfidy of it. It was unbelievable that the English, having degenerated to the stage where suffragettes heckled the Prime Minister and defied the police, were going to fight.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
If I had taken a doctoral degree, it would have stifled any writing capacity.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
I ask myself, have nations ever declined from a loss of moral sense rather than from physical reasons or the pressure of barbarians? I think that they have.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
Voluntary self-directed religion was more dangerous to the Church than any number of infidels.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
Completeness is rare in history.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
If it is not profitable for the common good that authority should be retained, it ought to be relinquished.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
When the gap between ideal and real becomes too wide, the system breaks down.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
One must stop conducting research before one has finished. Otherwise, one will never stop and never finish.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
The appetite for power is old and irrepressible in humankind, and in its action almost always destructive.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
Governments do not like to face radical remedies; it is easier to let politics predominate.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
To explain strange and irregular phenomena of nature, haphazard events and, above all, irrational human conduct. They exist to bear the burden of all things that cannot be comprehended except by supernatural intervention or design.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
The Church [in the 14th century] gave ceremony and dignity to lives that had little of either. It was the source of beauty and art to which all had some access and which many helped to create.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
The ills and disorders of the 14th century could not be without consequence. Times were to grow worse over the next fifty-odd years until at some imperceptible moment, by the some mysterious chemistry, energies were refreshed, ideas broke out of the mold of the Middle Ages into new realms, and humanity found itself redirected.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
The story and study of the past, both recent and distant, will not reveal the future, but it flashes beacon lights along the way and it is a useful nostrum against despair.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
We seem to be afflicted by a widespread and eroding reluctance to take any stand on any values, moral, behavioral or esthetic.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
To gain victory over the flesh was the purpose of fasting and celibacy, which denied the pleasures of this world for the sake of reward in the next.
BARBARA TUCHMAN