The costliest myth of our time has been the myth of the Communist monolith.
BARBARA TUCHMANHistorians who stuff in every item of research they have found, every shoelace and telephone call of a biographical subject, are not doing the hard work of selecting and shaping a readable story.
More Barbara Tuchman Quotes
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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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I want the reader to turn the page and keep on turning to the end.
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The writer’s object is – or should be – to hold the reader’s attention.
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War is the unfolding of miscalculations.
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The power to command frequently causes failure to think.
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When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.
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Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.
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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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Vainglory, however, no matter how much medieval Christianity insisted it was a sin, is a motor of mankind, no more eradicable than sex.
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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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Woman was the Church’s rival, the temptress, the distraction, the obstacle to holiness, the Devil’s decoy.
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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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If I had taken a doctoral degree, it would have stifled any writing capacity.
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Books are the carriers of civilization… Books are humanity in print.
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Completeness is rare in history.
BARBARA TUCHMAN






