Fateful moments tend to evoke grandeur of speech, especially in French.
BARBARA TUCHMANThe unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard
More Barbara Tuchman Quotes
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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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In the United States we have a society pervaded from top to bottom by contempt for the law.
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Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible.
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One 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.
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Reasonable orders are easy enough to obey; it is capricious, bureaucratic or plain idiotic demands that form the habit of discipline.
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Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female.
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The open frontier, the hardships of homesteading from scratch, the wealth of natural resources.
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Human behavior is timeless.
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Modern 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.
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Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library.
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To be right and overruled is not forgiven to persons in responsible positions.
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Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled.
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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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Governments do not like to face radical remedies; it is easier to let politics predominate.
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Russians, in the knowledge of inexhaustible supplies of manpower, are accustomed to accepting gigantic fatalities with comparative calm.
BARBARA TUCHMAN