Barbara Tuchman Quotes
Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip.
Barbara TuchmanBarbara Tuchman In individuals as in nations, contentment is silent, which tends to unbalance the historical record.
Barbara TuchmanBarbara Tuchman The conduct of war was so much more interesting than its prevention.
Barbara TuchmanBarbara Tuchman In the United States we have a society pervaded from top to bottom by contempt for the law.
Barbara TuchmanBarbara Tuchman The poets have familiarized more people with history than have the historians.
Barbara TuchmanBarbara Tuchman No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision.
Barbara TuchmanBarbara Tuchman To explain strange and irregular phenomena of nature, haphazard events and, above all, irrational human conduct. They exist to bear the burden of all things that cannot be comprehended except by supernatural intervention or design.
Barbara TuchmanBarbara Tuchman The costliest myth of our time has been the myth of the Communist monolith.
Barbara TuchmanBarbara Tuchman A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests.
Barbara TuchmanBarbara Tuchman Words are seductive and dangerous material, to be used with caution.
Barbara TuchmanBarbara Tuchman To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.
Barbara TuchmanBarbara Tuchman 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 TuchmanBarbara Tuchman 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 TuchmanBarbara Tuchman Government remains the paramount area of folly because it is there that men seek power over others – only to lose it over themselves.
Barbara TuchmanBarbara 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 TuchmanBarbara Tuchman 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.
Barbara TuchmanBarbara Tuchman