Barbara Tuchman
Barbara Tuchman
Barbara Wertheim Tuchmanwas an American historian and author. She won the Pulitzer Prize twice, for The Guns of August, a best-selling history of the prelude to and the first month of World War I, and Stilwell and the American Experience in China, a biography of General Joseph Stilwell...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionHistorian
Date of Birth30 January 1912
CountryUnited States of America
age needs bad-times
Human beings of any age need to approve of themselves; the bad times in history come when they cannot.
successful tyrants revolution
Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.
years ideas humanity
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.
common authority should
If it is not profitable for the common good that authority should be retained, it ought to be relinquished.
christian giving anxiety
Whatever solace the Christian faith could give was balanced by the anxiety it generated.
book artist fiction
I have always felt like an artist when I work on a book. I see no reason why the word should always be confined to writers of fiction and poetry.
book two cooking
To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse. They are of two kinds: the library of published material, books, pamphlets, periodicals, and the archive of unpublished papers and documents.
bankers books books-and-reading humanity treasures
Books are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.
hard-work stories research
Historians who stuff in every item of research they have found, every shoelace and telephone call of a biographical subject, are not doing the hard work of selecting and shaping a readable story.
teacher book sea
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.
book humanity print
Books are humanity in print.
thinking causes command
The power to command frequently causes failure to think.
thinking government self
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.
war jackals heels
Business, like a jackal, trotted on the heels of war.