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I have always felt like an artist when I work on a book. I see no reason why the word should always be confined to writers of fiction and poetry.

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

Fighting History Police
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Book Science Sea Teacher
Above all, discard the irrelevant.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Discard Irrelevant Matters
The conduct of war was so much more interesting than its prevention.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Interesting Prevention War
Completeness is rare in history.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Completeness History Rare
When people don’t have an objective, there’s much less dynamic effort, and that makes life a lot less interesting.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Effort Interesting People
Historians who stuff in every item of research they have found, every shoelace and telephone call of a biographical subject, are not doing the hard work of selecting and shaping a readable story.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Hard Stories Telephone Work
Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Closing Doors Library
in the midst of war and crisis nothing is as clear or as certain as it appears in hindsight
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Hindsight Midst War
A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Government Periods Pursuit
If wisdom in government eludes us, perhaps courage could substitute-the moral courage to terminate mistakes.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Courage Elude Mistake
An essential element for good writing is a good ear: One must listen to the sound of one’s own prose.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Essentials Sound Writing
Whatever solace the Christian faith could give was balanced by the anxiety it generated.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Anxiety Christian Giving
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 TUCHMAN

Atheism Believe Historical
Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Faculty Learning Teaching
Friendship of a kind that cannot easily be reversed tomorrow must have its roots in common interests and shared beliefs.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Belief Friendship Roots

I have always felt like an artist when I work on a book. I see no reason why the word should always be confined to writers of fiction and poetry.

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I have always felt like an artist when I work on a book. I see no reason why the word should always be confined to writers of fiction and poetry.

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Popular Authors

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