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
Barbara Tuchman quotes about
war years unity
The Hundred Years' War, like the crises of the Church in the same period, broke apart medieval unity.
believe historical atheism
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.
communism communist myth
The costliest myth of our time has been the myth of the Communist monolith.
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.
government pursuit periods
A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests.
history people poetry
The poets have familiarized more people with history than have the historians ...
history smoking hot
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?
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.
attention should reader
The writer's object is - or should be - to hold the reader's attention.
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.