Diplomacy means all the wicked devices of the Old World, spheres of influence, balances of power, secret treaties, triple alliances, and, during the interim period, appeasement of Fascism.
BARBARA TUCHMANCompleteness is rare in history.
More Barbara Tuchman Quotes
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To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history’s clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.
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The writer’s object is – or should be – to hold the reader’s attention.
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In the United States we have a society pervaded from top to bottom by contempt for the law.
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Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female.
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[T]he obverse of facile emotion in the 14th century was a general insensitivity to the spectacle of pain and death.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
Business offers a kind of power, but only to the very successful at the top, and without the dominion and titles and red carpets and motorcycle escorts of public office.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
An essential element for good writing is a good ear: One must listen to the sound of one’s own prose.
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No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision.
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Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip.
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In individuals as in nations, contentment is silent, which tends to unbalance the historical record.
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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.
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Books are humanity in print.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
satire is a wrapping of exaggeration around a core of reality.
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The fact of being reported increases the apparent extent of a deplorable development by a factor of ten.
BARBARA TUCHMAN






