Barbara W. Tuchman - War Quotes

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Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip and Germans, no less than other peoples, prepare for the last war.

Barbara W. Tuchman
Business, like a jackal, trotted on the heels of war.

Barbara W. Tuchman
The real reason for his attitude lay deeper. Essentially, Gloucester and the barons of his party were opposed to peace because they felt war to be their occupation. Behind them were the poorer knights and squires and archers of England, who, unconcerned with rights or wrongs, were inclined to war such as had been their livelihood.

Barbara W. Tuchman
The social damage was not in the failure but in the undertaking, which was expensive. The cost of war was the poison running through the 14th century.

Barbara W. Tuchman
When every autumn people said it could not last through the winter, and when every spring there was still no end in sight, only the hope that out of it all some good would accrue to mankind kept men and nations fighting. When at last it was over, the war had many diverse results and one dominant one transcending all others: disillusion.

Barbara W. Tuchman
Money was the crux. Raising money to pay the cost of war was to cause more damage to 14th century society than the physical destruction of war itself.

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

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

Barbara W. Tuchman
In the midst of war and crisis nothing is as clear or as certain as it appears in hindsight

Barbara W. Tuchman
More than a code of manners in war and love, Chivalry was a moral system, governing the whole of noble life...

Barbara W. Tuchman