Arguments can always be found to turn desire into policy.
BARBARA TUCHMANArguments can always be found to turn desire into policy.
BARBARA TUCHMANThe 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 TUCHMANChristianity in its ideas was never the art of the possible.
BARBARA TUCHMANGovernments do not like to face radical remedies; it is easier to let politics predominate.
BARBARA TUCHMANBooks are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.
BARBARA TUCHMANOne 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 TUCHMANBelgium, where there occurred one of the rare appearances of the hero in history, was lifted above herself by the uncomplicated conscience of her King and, faced with the choice to acquiesce or resist, took less than three hours to make her decision, knowing it might be mortal.
BARBARA TUCHMANRussians, in the knowledge of inexhaustible supplies of manpower, are accustomed to accepting gigantic fatalities with comparative calm.
BARBARA TUCHMANMoney was the crux. Raising money to pay the cost of war was to cause more damage to 14th century society than the physical destruction of war itself.
BARBARA TUCHMANTheology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female.
BARBARA TUCHMANWhen the gap between ideal and real becomes too wide, the system breaks down.
BARBARA TUCHMANNothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.
BARBARA TUCHMANHuman beings of any age need to approve of themselves; the bad times in history come when they cannot.
BARBARA TUCHMANHonor wears different coats to different eyes.
BARBARA TUCHMANModern 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 TUCHMANTo a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.
BARBARA TUCHMAN