They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.
BARBARA TUCHMANIf all were equalized by death, as the medieval idea constantly emphasized, was it not possible that inequalities on earth were contrary to the will of God?
More Barbara Tuchman Quotes
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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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Russians, in the knowledge of inexhaustible supplies of manpower, are accustomed to accepting gigantic fatalities with comparative calm.
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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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No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision.
BARBARA TUCHMAN -
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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A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests.
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Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip.
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The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard
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To gain victory over the flesh was the purpose of fasting and celibacy, which denied the pleasures of this world for the sake of reward in the next.
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The reality of a question is inevitably more complicated than we would like to suppose.
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We seem to be afflicted by a widespread and eroding reluctance to take any stand on any values, moral, behavioral or esthetic.
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The Church [in the 14th century] gave ceremony and dignity to lives that had little of either. It was the source of beauty and art to which all had some access and which many helped to create.
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The clergy [in the 14th century] on the whole were probably no more lecherous or greedy or untrustworthy than other men, but because they were supposed to be better or nearer to God than other men, their failings attracted more attention.
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The appetite for power is old and irrepressible in humankind, and in its action almost always destructive.
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Doctrine tied itself into infinite knots over the realities of sex.
BARBARA TUCHMAN