The nastiness of women [in the 14th century] was generally perceived at the close of life when a man began to worry about hell, and his sexual desire in any case fading.
BARBARA TUCHMANThe nastiness of women [in the 14th century] was generally perceived at the close of life when a man began to worry about hell, and his sexual desire in any case fading.
BARBARA TUCHMANBooks are humanity in print.
BARBARA TUCHMANsatire is a wrapping of exaggeration around a core of reality.
BARBARA TUCHMANConfronted by menace, or what is perceived as menace, governments will usually attempt to smash it, rarely to examine it, understand it, define it.
BARBARA TUCHMANThe Hundred Years’ War, like the crises of the Church in the same period, broke apart medieval unity.
BARBARA TUCHMANI have always been in a condition in which I cannot not write.
BARBARA TUCHMANWar is the unfolding of miscalculations.
BARBARA TUCHMANBusiness, like a jackal, trotted on the heels of war.
BARBARA TUCHMANGovernment remains the paramount area of folly because it is there that men seek power over others – only to lose it over themselves.
BARBARA TUCHMANCompleteness is rare in history.
BARBARA TUCHMANNo nation in the world has so many drastic problems squeezed into so small a space, under such urgent pressure of time and heavy burden of history, as Israel.
BARBARA TUCHMANDisaster is rarely as pervasive as it seems from recorded accounts. The fact of being on the record makes it appear continuous and ubiquitous whereas it is more likely to have been sporadic both in time and place.
BARBARA TUCHMANIt 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 TUCHMANIn the United States we have a society pervaded from top to bottom by contempt for the law.
BARBARA TUCHMANWithout books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled.
BARBARA TUCHMANWhen the gap between ideal and real becomes too wide, the system breaks down.
BARBARA TUCHMAN