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
military mind comfort
Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.
eye honor different
Honor wears different coats to different eyes.
technology use purpose
For belligerent purposes, the 14th century, like the 20th, commanded a technology more sophisticated than the mental and moral capacity that guided its use.
age needs bad-times
Human beings of any age need to approve of themselves; the bad times in history come when they cannot.
teacher book humanity
Books are ... companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of mind. Books are humanity in print.
missing ingredients danger
Human beings, like plans, prove fallible in the presence of those ingredients that are missing in maneuvers - danger, death, and live ammunition.
government decision faces
No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision.
past tree old-friends
The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard
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.
kings hero knowing
Belgium, where there occurred one of the rare appearances of the hero in history, was lifted above herself by the uncomplicated conscience of her King and, faced with the choice to acquiesce or resist, took less than three hours to make her decision, knowing it might be mortal.
fighting history police
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.
writing want pages
I want the reader to turn the page and keep on turning to the end.
sunset dying world
The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history's clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.
sex matter sin
Vainglory, however, no matter how much medieval Christianity insisted it was a sin, is a motor of mankind, no more eradicable than sex.