The poets have familiarized more people with history than have the historians.
BARBARA TUCHMANThe poets have familiarized more people with history than have the historians.
BARBARA TUCHMANTo put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup.
BARBARA TUCHMANWords are seductive and dangerous material, to be used with caution.
BARBARA TUCHMANTo put away one’s own original thoughts in order to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost.
BARBARA TUCHMANModern historians have suggested that in his last years he (Richard II) was overtaken by mental disease, but that is only a modern view of the malfunction common to 14th century rulers: inability to inhibit impulse.
BARBARA TUCHMANReasonable orders are easy enough to obey; it is capricious, bureaucratic or plain idiotic demands that form the habit of discipline.
BARBARA TUCHMANThe conduct of war was so much more interesting than its prevention.
BARBARA TUCHMANWhen truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.
BARBARA TUCHMANBusiness, like a jackal, trotted on the heels of war.
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 TUCHMANIn individuals as in nations, contentment is silent, which tends to unbalance the historical record.
BARBARA TUCHMAN[T]he obverse of facile emotion in the 14th century was a general insensitivity to the spectacle of pain and death.
BARBARA TUCHMANLearning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced
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 TUCHMANA phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests.
BARBARA TUCHMANThe better part of valor is to spend it learning to live with differences, however hostile, unless and until we can find another planet.
BARBARA TUCHMAN