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Barbara W. Tuchman Quotes
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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
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To admit error and cut losses is rare among individuals, unknown among states.
Barbara W. Tuchman
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Voluntary self-directed religion was more dangerous to the Church than any number of infidels.
Barbara W. Tuchman
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The poets have familiarized more people with history than have the historians.
Barbara W. Tuchman
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Fateful moments tend to evoke grandeur of speech, especially in French.
Barbara W. Tuchman
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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
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Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.
Barbara W. Tuchman
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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
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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
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Doctrine tied itself into infinite knots over the realities of sex.
Barbara W. Tuchman
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In the United States we have a society pervaded from top to bottom by contempt for the law.
Barbara W. Tuchman
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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
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Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.
Barbara W. Tuchman
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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
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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
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The Hundred Years' War, like the crises of the Church in the same period, broke apart medieval unity.
Barbara W. Tuchman
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For most people reform meant relief from ecclesiastical extortions.
Barbara W. Tuchman
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The conduct of war was so much more interesting than its prevention.
Barbara W. Tuchman
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Whatever solace the Christian faith could give was balanced by the anxiety it generated.
Barbara W. Tuchman
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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
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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
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Quote of the day
I can say that I never knew what joy was like until I gave up pursuing happiness, or cared to live until I chose to die. For these two discoveries I am beholden to Jesus.
Malcolm Muggeridge
Barbara W. Tuchman
Born:
January 30, 1912
Died:
February 6, 1989
(aged 77)
Bio:
Barbara Wertheim Tuchman was an American historian and author.
Known for:
The Guns of August (1962)
A Distant Mirror (1978)
The Proud Tower (1966)
The March of Folly (1984)
Most used words:
war
time
power
history
government
century
books
14th
dead
fact
policy
historian
mind
people
face
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