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.
BARBARA TUCHMANIn the search for meaning we must not forget that the gods (or God, for that matter) are a concept of the human mind; they are the creatures of man, not vice versa. They are needed and invented to give meaning and purpose to the struggle that is life on Earth.
More Barbara Tuchman Quotes
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In the midst of events there is no perspective.
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More than a code of manners in war and love, Chivalry was a moral system, governing the whole of noble life.
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To put away one’s own original thoughts in order to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost.
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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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Rome had Caesar, a man of remarkable governing talents, although it must be said that a ruler who arouses opponents to resort to assassination is probably not as smart as he ought to be.
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Governments do not like to face radical remedies; it is easier to let politics predominate.
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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.
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When people don’t have an objective, there’s much less dynamic effort, and that makes life a lot less interesting.
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The Hundred Years’ War, like the crises of the Church in the same period, broke apart medieval unity.
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To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup.
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Nothing is more satisfying than to write a good sentence.
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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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Human beings, like plans, prove fallible in the presence of those ingredients that are missing in maneuvers – danger, death, and live ammunition.
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One must stop conducting research before one has finished. Otherwise, one will never stop and never finish.
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No female iniquity was more severely condemned than the habit of plucking eyebrows and the hairline to heighten the forehead.
BARBARA TUCHMAN