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
speech moments evoke
Fateful moments tend to evoke grandeur of speech, especially in French.
reason heard presumption
When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.
loss thinking barbarians
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.
writing want pages
I want the reader to turn the page and keep on turning to the end.
war sea history
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.
wisdom appreciation common-sense
Wisdom - meaning judgment acting on experience, common sense, available knowledge, and a decent appreciation of probability.
spring war autumn
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.
courage mistake elude-us
If wisdom in government eludes us, perhaps courage could substitute-the moral courage to terminate mistakes.
military mind battle
Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip.
library shelter muse
To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.
mean power secret
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.
space israel world
No nation in the world has so many drastic problems squeezed into so small a space, under such urgent pressure of time and heavy burden of history, as Israel.
waiting challenges scratches
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.
book order original-thought
To put away one's own original thoughts in order to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost.