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
behavior timeless human-behavior
Human behavior is timeless.
power action appetite
The appetite for power is old and irrepressible in humankind, and in its action almost always destructive.
war interesting prevention
The conduct of war was so much more interesting than its prevention.
book civilization literature-history
Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled.
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.
power men folly
Government remains the paramount area of folly because it is there that men seek power over others - only to lose it over themselves.
history people poetry
The poets have familiarized more people with history than have the historians ...
hurt loss law
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.
art ideas christianity
Christianity in its ideas was never the art of the possible.
pain emotion century
[T]he obverse of facile emotion in the 14th century was a general insensitivity to the spectacle of pain and death.
views years disease
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.
common authority should
If it is not profitable for the common good that authority should be retained, it ought to be relinquished.
firsts garments legitimacy
To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup.
people relief reform
For most people reform meant relief from ecclesiastical extortions.