An essential element for good writing is a good ear: One must listen to the sound of one’s own prose.
BARBARA TUCHMANOne constant among the elements of 1914—as of any era—was the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true.
More Barbara Tuchman Quotes
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bureaucracy, safely repeating today what it did yesterday, rolls on as ineluctably as some vast computer, which, once penetrated by error, duplicates it forever.
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For belligerent purposes, the 14th century, like the 20th, commanded a technology more sophisticated than the mental and moral capacity that guided its use.
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Business, like a jackal, trotted on the heels of war.
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When the gap between ideal and real becomes too wide, the system breaks down.
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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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Honor wears different coats to different eyes.
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To be a bestseller is not necessarily a measure of quality, but it is a measure of communication.
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Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip.
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The fleet sailed to its war base in the North Sea, headed not so much for some rendezvous with glory as for rendezvous with discretion.
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If I had taken a doctoral degree, it would have stifled any writing capacity.
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Human behavior is timeless.
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No 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.
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Words are seductive and dangerous material, to be used with caution.
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satire is a wrapping of exaggeration around a core of reality.
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One must stop conducting research before one has finished. Otherwise, one will never stop and never finish.
BARBARA TUCHMAN






