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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.

Barbara Tuchman

The writer’s object is – or should be – to hold the reader’s attention.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Attention Object Reader
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.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Country Small Space Urgent World
The poets have familiarized more people with history than have the historians.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

History People Poetry
Christianity in its ideas was never the art of the possible.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Art Christianity Ideas
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

Artist Book Fiction Reason
Completeness is rare in history.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Completeness History Rare
The fact of being reported increases the apparent extent of a deplorable development by a factor of ten.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Development Facts Tragedy
If 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?
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Earth Ideas Medieval
For me, the card catalog has been a companion all my working life. To leave it is like leaving the house one was brought up in.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Cards House Leaving
Wisdom – meaning judgment acting on experience, common sense, available knowledge, and a decent appreciation of probability.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Appreciation Common Sense Wisdom
War is the unfolding of miscalculations.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Military Peace War
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.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Disease Views Years
When people don’t have an objective, there’s much less dynamic effort, and that makes life a lot less interesting.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Effort Interesting People
Human beings, like plans, prove fallible in the presence of those ingredients that are missing in maneuvers – danger, death, and live ammunition.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Danger Ingredients Missing
Diplomacy means all the wicked devices of the Old World, spheres of influence, balances of power, secret treaties, triple alliances, and, during the interim period, appeasement of Fascism.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Mean Power Secret
If power corrupts, weakness in the seat of power, with its constant necessity of deals and bribes and compromising arrangements,corrupts even more.
BARBARA TUCHMAN

Compromise Power Weakness

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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Human beings, like plans, prove fallible in the presence of those ingredients that are missing in maneuvers – danger, death, and live ammunition.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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