Barbara W. Tuchman Quotes

103 Sourced Quotes

Vainglory, however, no matter how much medieval Christianity insisted it was a sin, is a motor of mankind, no more eradicable than sex. As long as combat was desirable as the source of honor and glory, the knight had no wish to share it with the commoner, even for the sake of success.

Barbara W. Tuchman
To admit error and cut losses is rare among individuals, unknown among states.

Barbara W. Tuchman
Voluntary self-directed religion was more dangerous to the Church than any number of infidels.

Barbara W. Tuchman
The poets have familiarized more people with history than have the historians.

Barbara W. Tuchman
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.

Barbara W. Tuchman
Nothing is more satisfying than to write a good sentence. It is no fun to write lumpishly, dully, in prose the reader must plod through like wet sand. But it is a pleasure to achieve, if one can, a clear running prose that is simple yet full of surprises. This does not just happen. It requires skill, hard work, a good ear, and continued practice.

Barbara W. Tuchman
Perhaps by this time the 14th century was not quite sane. If enlightened self-interest is the criterion of sanity, in the verdict of Michelet, no epoch was more naturally mad.

Barbara W. Tuchman
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 W. Tuchman
Fateful moments tend to evoke grandeur of speech, especially in French.

Barbara W. Tuchman
His (Deschamps') complaint of court life was the same as is made of government at the top in any age: it was composed of hypocrisy, flattery, lying, paying and betraying; it was where calumny and cupidity reigned, common sense lacked, truth dared not appear, and where to survive one had to be deaf, blind, and dumb.

Barbara W. Tuchman
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