Barbara Tuchman Quotes

To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup. ~ Barbara Tuchman

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

When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule. ~ Barbara Tuchman

The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard. ~ Barbara Tuchman

Of all the ills that our poor ... society is heir to, the focal one, it seems to me, from which so much of our uneasiness and confusion derive, is the absence of standards. ~ Barbara Tuchman

That the Jews were unholy was a belief so ingrained by the Church [by the 14th century] that the most devout persons were the harshest in their antipathy, none more so than St. Louis. ~ Barbara Tuchman

The Germans could not get over the perfidy of it. It was unbelievable that the English, having degenerated to the stage where suffragettes heckled the Prime Minister and defied the police, were going to fight. ~ Barbara Tuchman

Above all, discard the irrelevant. ~ Barbara Tuchman

No economic activity was more irrepressible [in the 14th century] than the investment and lending at interest of money; it was the basis for the rise of the Western capitalist economy and the building of private fortunes-and it was based on the sin of usury. ~ Barbara Tuchman

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

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

The open frontier, the hardships of homesteading from scratch, the wealth of natural resources, the whole vast challenge of a continent waiting to be exploited, combined to produce a prevailing materialism and an American drive bent as much, if not more, on money, property, and power than was true of the Old World from which we had fled. ~ Barbara Tuchman

In a country where misery and want were the foundation of the social structure, famine was periodic, death from starvation common, disease pervasive, thievery normal, and graft and corruption taken for granted, the elimination of these conditions in Communist China is so striking that negative aspects of the new rule fade in relative importance. ~ Barbara Tuchman

If wisdom in government eludes us, perhaps courage could substitute-the moral courage to terminate mistakes. ~ Barbara Tuchman

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

Woman [in the 14th century] was the Church's rival, the temptress, the distraction, the obstacle to holiness, the Devil's decoy. ~ Barbara Tuchman

In the midst of events there is no perspective. ~ Barbara Tuchman

The power to command frequently causes failure to think. ~ Barbara Tuchman

Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female. ~ Barbara W. Tuchman

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

To ensure that no one gained an advantage over anyone else, commercial law [in the 14th century] prohibited innovation in tools or techniques, underselling below a fixed price, working late by artificial light, employing extra apprentices or wife and underage children, and advertising of wares or praising them to the detriment of others. ~ Barbara Tuchman

Satire is a wrapping of exaggeration around a core of reality. ~ Barbara 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 Tuchman

An essential element for good writing is a good ear: One must listen to the sound of one's own prose. ~ Barbara Tuchman

The ills and disorders of the 14th century could not be without consequence. Times were to grow worse over the next fifty-odd years until at some imperceptible moment, by the some mysterious chemistry, energies were refreshed, ideas broke out of the mold of the Middle Ages into new realms, and humanity found itself redirected. ~ Barbara Tuchman

The fleet sailed to its war base in the North Sea, headed not so much for some rendezvous with glory as for rendezvous with discretion. ~ Barbara Tuchman

No female iniquity was more severely condemned [in the 14th century] than the habit of plucking eyebrows and the hairline to heighten the forehead. ~ Barbara 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 Tuchman

After absorbing the news of today, one expects to face a world consisting entirely of strikes, crimes, power failures, broken water mains, stalled trains, school shutdowns, muggers, drug addicts, neo-Nazis, and rapists. The fact is that one can come home in the evening, on a lucky day, without having encountered more than one or two of these phenomena. ~ Barbara 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 Tuchman

To put away one's own original thoughts in order to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost. ~ Barbara Tuchman

She (historian Barbara Tuchman) draws on skepticism, not cynicism, leaving the reader not so much outraged by human ability as amused and saddened by human folly. ~ Robert K. Massie

It is wiser, I believe, to arrive at theory by way of evidence rather than the other way around ... 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 of its own accord. ~ Barbara 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 Tuchman

Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled. ~ Barbara Tuchman

The appetite for power is old and irrepressible in humankind, and in its action almost always destructive. ~ Barbara 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 Tuchman

Christianity in its ideas was never the art of the possible. ~ Barbara Tuchman

In the search for meaning we must not forget that the gods (or God, for that matter) are a concept of the human mind; they are the creatures of man, not vice versa. They are needed and invented to give meaning and purpose to the struggle that is life on Earth, 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 Tuchman

To be a bestseller is not necessarily a measure of quality, but it is a measure of communication. ~ Barbara Tuchman

The Church [in the 14th century] gave ceremony and dignity to lives that had little of either. It was the source of beauty and art to which all had some access and which many helped to create. ~ Barbara Tuchman

Rome had Caesar, a man of remarkable governing talents, although it must be said that a ruler who arouses opponents to resort to assassination is probably not as smart as he ought to be. ~ Barbara Tuchman

Completeness is rare in history ... ~ Barbara Tuchman

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

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

Misgovernment is of four kinds, often in combination. They are: 1) tyranny or oppression, of which history provides so many well-known examples that they do not need citing; 2) excessive ambition, such as Athens' attempted conquest of Sicily in the Peloponnesian War, Philip II's of England via the Armada, Germany's twice-attempted rule of Europe by a self-conceived master race, Japan's bid for an empire of Asia; 3) incompetence or decadence, as in the case of the late Roman empire, the last Romanovs and the last imperial dynasty of China; and finally 4) folly or perversity. ~ Barbara Tuchman

In America, where the electoral process is drowning in commercial techniques of fund-raising and image-making, we may have completed a circle back to a selection process as unconcerned with qualifications as that which made Darius King of Persia ... he whose horse was the first to neigh at sunrise should be King. ~ Barbara Tuchman

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

While husbands and lovers in the stories [of the 14th century] are of all kinds, ranging from sympathetic to disgusting, women are invariably deceivers: inconstant, unscrupulous, quarrelsome, querulous, lecherous, shameless, although not necessarily all of these at once. ~ Barbara Tuchman

Human behavior is timeless. ~ Barbara 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 Tuchman

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

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

Friendship of a kind that cannot easily be reversed tomorrow must have its roots in common interests and shared beliefs. ~ Barbara Tuchman

If power corrupts, weakness in the seat of power, with its constant necessity of deals and bribes and compromising arrangements,corrupts even more. ~ Barbara Tuchman

It hurt the economic historians, the Marxists and the fabians, to admit that the Ten Hour Bill, the basic piece of 19th century legislation, came down from the top, out of aa nobleman's private feelings about the Gospel, or that the abolition of the slave trade was achieved, not through the operation of some "law" of profit and loss, but peurlet as the result of tyhe new humanitarianism of the Evangelicals. ~ Barbara Tuchman

When people don't have an objective, there's much less dynamic effort, and that makes life a lot less interesting. ~ Barbara Tuchman

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

Russians, in the knowledge of inexhaustible supplies of manpower, are accustomed to accepting gigantic fatalities with comparative calm. ~ Barbara 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 Tuchman

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

In April 1917 the illusion of isolation was destroyed, America came to the end of innocence, and of the exuberant freedom of bachelor independence. That the responsibilities of world power have not made us happier is no surprise. To help ourselves manage them, we have replaced the illusion of isolation with a new illusion of omnipotence. ~ Barbara Tuchman

I truly believe that before I retire from public office, I'll be voting for a woman for president. ~ Barbara Mikulski

I'm not questioning the monotheistic god. I think there's absolutely no evidence for the existence of such a god. When I say that, I mean I'm - part of that is that the idea that God could be all-powerful and also benevolent is on its face contradictory. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

I tried to stop smoking cigarettes by telling myself I just didn't want to smoke, but I didn't believe myself ~ Barbara Kelly

She had come to terms with her lack of beauty, but never with her lack of genius in the single thing she had ever wanted. ~ Barbara Hambly

There is no temptation from outside the heart. ~ Barbara Hambly

Oh, it was a disaster, .. It went down like a lead balloon. I don't know why. I had thought the women in the audience deserved a little bit of something else after watching all those beautiful women. But I think they were shocked. Although the guys did dance nicely. ~ Barbara Lee

The biggest lie ever is that practice makes perfect. Not true - practice makes you better. ~ Barbara Oakley

Without me, without me,
Everyday's misery.
But with me - am I wrong?
No night is too long! ~ Barbara Vine

returned to the typewriter, angrily erasing and correcting each mistake she'd made, desperately wishing she could as easily wipe out her mental image of the man in her carriage house. ~ Barbara Delinsky

After that, things happened very quickly. She gave me a key to her house, and I gave her a key to my apartment. If we were in town, we spent every weekend together. She cooked for me - she was good in the kitchen, but then she was good everywhere. We watched the Friday night fights on TV, and on Saturday or Sunday afternoons we'd go for long walks in the mountains above Malibu. Occasionally we would go to a movie, slipping in after the lights went down. Whenever we went out, Barbara [Stanwyck] would wear a scarf over her head, or a kind of hat, so it would be hard to tell who she was. For the next four years, we became part of each other's lives. In a very real way, I think we still are. Barbara proved to be one of the most marvelous relationships of my life. I was twenty-two, she was forty-five, but our ages were beside the point. She was everything to me - a beautiful woman with a great sense of humor and enormous accomplishments to her name. ~ Robert Wagner

Ask to know what you are born to do. Follow the compass of joy. ~ Barbara Marx Hubbard

I found it interesting that as people become more technically oriented all over the world, at the same time people are becoming increasingly spiritual. The success of the Da Vinci code - even though it was a great yawn - also showed people's interest in religion. ~ Barbara Walters

In American Society today, we need to have volunteerism. I truly believe that it is the glue that will hold us together and it will be the energy that will take us into the 21st century. ~ Barbara Mikulski

Look at me, Kate."
She raised her eyes to his.
"What do you see?"
She thought for a moment. "You've got a spot."
Charlie gave a snort of laughter. "You're not supposed to tell the fifth-sexiest man in UK, he's got a spot."
"Who voted? Senior citizens? ~ Barbara Elsborg

The Republican Party: a few million gun-toting, Armageddon-ready Baptists. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

I lost a child," she said, meeting Lusa's eyes directly. "I thought I wouldn't live through it. But you do. You learn to love the place somebody leaves behind for you. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

You can't know somebody, I thought, till you've followed him home. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

The more aware individuals are of the themes that are central to their own sense of personal identity, the better they can recognize the dimensions of similarity and difference in other people that will contribute to intimate relationships. ~ Barbara M. Newman

I have long relied on the comforts of martyrdom. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

An enlightened citizen is an indispensable ingredient of the infrastructure of
democracy. ~ Barbara

I feel that I can't do certain things that have sent to me, scripts, because I think that really - I've been June Cleaver for so many years, because we went back, you know, and we did - 20-year hiatus we had - and we went back and made 105 new ones. And so I really feel very strongly that there are certain things I won't do. ~ Barbara Billingsley

Positivity doesn't just change the contents of your mind ... It widens the span of possibilities that you see. ~ Barbara Fredrickson

Anne would put on her head after receiving the title of Marchioness of Pembroke. ~ Sylvia Barbara Soberton

I personally am inclined to approach [housework] the way governments treat dissent: ignore it until it revolts. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

If God is about putting God ahead of myself then I've just quit being religious, because that's what got me into such deep trouble. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor

It occurs to her that there is one thing about people you can never understand well enough: how entirely inside themselves they are. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

"I always read everything when I was a kid-and I do mean everything, from Nancy Drew to Dickens to my dad's John D. MacDonald-but then I went to regular school and the English teachers started telling me to read 'real' books, so I tried. And you know, I kinda went off reading for a while. I had already been reading literary novels and the classics mixed in with whatever else, but-" She waved a hand. "So I went back to reading whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted to-reading had been my greatest pleasure in all the world. I mean I never really watched all that much television, because we were moving around, never really had solid digs until I was thirteen, so reading was everything. ~ Barbara O'Neal

He seems to be supporting her tenderly. But what holds them together is difficult to pin down.
In her memoir, she wrote that he once dropped her on her hip very painfully, and she had the distinct impression he'd done it on purpose.
What really goes on between two people is very difficult to say. ~ Barbara Browning

Transformationally motivated people are the growing edge of a great continuity of souls reaching back to the very earliest times. ~ Barbara Marx Hubbard

I know that the Bible is a special kind of book, but I find it as seductive as any other. If I am not careful, I can begin to mistake the words on the page for the realities they describe. I can begin to love the dried ink marks on the page more than I love the encounters that gave rise to them. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor

If you let yourself abandon the I-should-know-this-already attitude and simply accept your ignorance without giving yourself a hard time about it, then you can learn whatever it is you need to learn. ~ Barbara Baig

Just focus on whatever section you are studying. You'll find that once you put the first problem or concept in your library, whatever it is, then the second concept will go in a bit more easily. And the third more easily still. Not that all of this is a snap, but it does get easier. ~ Barbara Oakley

I have been lucky enough to have had the opportunity of travelling across this country and enduring all the classic situations that go with talking to people. ~ Barbara Amiel

A Goddess religion should be out in the open, not underground as it is right now. A Goddess religion would cause men to look at women differently. ~ Barbara G. Walker