Barbara W. Tuchman Quotes

103 Sourced Quotes

Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.

Barbara W. Tuchman
There is no such thing as a neutral or purely objective historian. Without an opinion a historian would be simply a ticking clock, and unreadable besides.

Barbara W. Tuchman
On being shown a relic said to be a bone of St. Elizabeth, he (Sigismund) turned it over and remarked that it could just as well be that of a dead cobbler.

Barbara W. Tuchman
Doctrine tied itself into infinite knots over the realities of sex.

Barbara W. Tuchman
In the United States we have a society pervaded from top to bottom by contempt for the law.

Barbara W. Tuchman
It is wiser, I believe, to arrive at theory by way of evidence rather than the other way round... It is more rewarding, in any case, to assemble the facts first and, in the process of arranging them in narrative form, to discover a theory or a historical generalization emerging on its own accord.

Barbara W. Tuchman
Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.

Barbara W. Tuchman
To rush in upon an event before its significance has had time to separate from the surrounding circumstances may be enterprising, but is it useful?... The recent prevalence of these hot histories on publishers' lists raises the question: Should — or perhaps can — history be written while it is still smoking?

Barbara W. Tuchman
Strong prejudices in an ill-formed mind are hazardous to government, and when combined with a position of power even more so.

Barbara W. Tuchman
The Hundred Years' War, like the crises of the Church in the same period, broke apart medieval unity.

Barbara W. Tuchman
For most people reform meant relief from ecclesiastical extortions.

Barbara W. Tuchman
The conduct of war was so much more interesting than its prevention.

Barbara W. Tuchman
Whatever solace the Christian faith could give was balanced by the anxiety it generated.

Barbara W. Tuchman
Diplomacy means all the wicked devices of the Old World, spheres of influence, balances of power, secret treaties, triple alliances, and, during the interwar period, appeasement of Fascism.

Barbara W. Tuchman
Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts.

Barbara W. Tuchman
The better part of valor is to spend it learning to live with differences, however hostile, unless and until we can find another planet.

Barbara W. Tuchman
What his imagination is to the poet, facts are to the historian. His exercise of judgment comes in their selection, his art in their arrangement. His method is narrative.... His subject is the story of man's past. His function is to make it known.

Barbara W. Tuchman
If it is not profitable for the common good that authority should be retained, it ought to be relinquished.

Barbara W. Tuchman
When the gap between ideal and real becomes too wide, the system breaks down.

Barbara W. Tuchman
What is government but an arrangement by which the many accept the authority of the few?

Barbara W. Tuchman
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.

Barbara W. Tuchman
I ask myself, have nations ever declined from a loss of moral sense rather than from physical reasons or the pressure of barbarians? I think that they have.

Barbara W. Tuchman
The fact of being reported increases the apparent extent of a deplorable development by a factor of ten.

Barbara W. Tuchman
Wisdom—meaning judgment acting on experience, common sense, available knowledge, and a decent appreciation of probability.

Barbara W. Tuchman
In individuals as in nations, contentment is silent, which tends to unbalance the historical record.

Barbara W. Tuchman
The emphasis on sorcery reflected accusations by the authorities more than it did actual practice. Being threatened, the Church responded by virulent persecution.

Barbara W. Tuchman
For one August in its history Paris was French—and silent.

Barbara W. 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 W. Tuchman
Bureaucracy, safely repeating today what it did yesterday, rolls on as ineluctably as some vast computer, which, once penetrated by error, duplicates it forever.

Barbara W. Tuchman
A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by government of policies contrary to their own interests. Mankind, it seems, makes a poorer performance of government than of almost any human activity.

Barbara W. Tuchman