black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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 Tuchman

Vainglory, however, no matter how much medieval Christianity insisted it was a sin, is a motor of mankind, no more eradicable than sex.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Eradicable Matter Sex Sin
Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Female Males Sin
Disaster is rarely as pervasive as it seems from recorded accounts. The fact of being on the record makes it appear continuous and ubiquitous whereas it is more likely to have been sporadic both in time and place.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Disaster Facts Records
in the midst of war and crisis nothing is as clear or as certain as it appears in hindsight
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Hindsight Midst War
Government remains the paramount area of folly because it is there that men seek power over others – only to lose it over themselves.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Folly Men Power
No female iniquity was more severely condemned than the habit of plucking eyebrows and the hairline to heighten the forehead.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Eyebrows Female Habit
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.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Desire Women Worry
In the midst of events there is no perspective.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Events Midst Perspective
The fact of being reported increases the apparent extent of a deplorable development by a factor of ten.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Development Facts Tragedy
War is the unfolding of miscalculations.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Military Peace War
That the Jews were unholy was a belief so ingrained by the Church [by the 14th century] that the most devout persons were the harshest in their antipathy, none more so than St. Louis.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Belief Century Church
I ask myself, have nations ever declined from a loss of moral sense rather than from physical reasons or the pressure of barbarians? I think that they have.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Barbarians Loss Thinking
The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard
BARBARA TUCHMAN

History Past Tree
To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Library Muse Shelter
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.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Alternatives Elements Eras
I have always been in a condition in which I cannot not write.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Always Condition Writer Writing

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Barbara Tuchman Quotes