Barbara Tuchman Quotes

Arguments can always be found to turn desire into policy.

For most people reform meant relief from ecclesiastical extortions.

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.

War is the unfolding of miscalculations.

The appetite for power is old and irrepressible in humankind, and in its action almost always destructive.

Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced

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.

Books are the carriers of civilization… Books are humanity in print.

satire is a wrapping of exaggeration around a core of reality.