Top 111 Quotes & Sayings by Barbara Tuchman

In the United States we have a society pervaded from top to bottom by contempt for the law.

Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female.

To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup.

A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests.

in the midst of war and crisis nothing is as clear or as certain as it appears in hindsight

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.

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, windows on the world, and (as a poet has said) "lighthouses erected in the sea of time." They are companions , teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.

One must stop conducting research before one has finished. Otherwise, one will never stop and never finish.

When the gap between ideal and real becomes too wide, the system breaks down.

Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled.

Woman was the Church's rival, the temptress, the distraction, the obstacle to holiness, the Devil's decoy.

The power to command frequently causes failure to think.

Books are the carriers of civilization... Books are humanity in print.

Fateful moments tend to evoke grandeur of speech, especially in French.

Russians, in the knowledge of inexhaustible supplies of manpower, are accustomed to accepting gigantic fatalities with comparative calm.

Friendship of a kind that cannot easily be reversed tomorrow must have its roots in common interests and shared beliefs.

If wisdom in government eludes us, perhaps courage could substitute-the moral courage to terminate mistakes.

No female iniquity was more severely condemned than the habit of plucking eyebrows and the hairline to heighten the forehead.

[T]he obverse of facile emotion in the 14th century was a general insensitivity to the spectacle of pain and death.

No economic activity was more irrepressible [in the 14th century] than the investment and lending at interest of money; it was the basis for the rise of the Western capitalist economy and the building of private fortunes-and it was based on the sin of usury.

When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.

Arguments can always be found to turn desire into policy.

The better part of valor is to spend it learning to live with differences, however hostile, unless and until we can find another planet.

In the search for meaning we must not forget that the gods (or God, for that matter) are a concept of the human mind; they are the creatures of man, not vice versa. They are needed and invented to give meaning and purpose to the struggle that is life on Earth, to explain strange and irregular phenomena of nature, haphazard events and, above all, irrational human conduct. They exist to bear the burden of all things that cannot be comprehended except by supernatural intervention or design.

What his imagination is to the poet, facts are to the historian. His exercise of judgment comes in their selection, his art in their arrangement.

Strong prejudices in an ill-formed mind are hazardous to government, and when combined with a position of power even more so.

After absorbing the news of today, one expects to face a world consisting entirely of strikes, crimes, power failures, broken water mains, stalled trains, school shutdowns, muggers, drug addicts, neo-Nazis, and rapists. The fact is that one can come home in the evening, on a lucky day, without having encountered more than one or two of these phenomena.

Chief among the forces affecting political folly is lust for power, named by Tacitus as "the most flagrant of all the passions." Because it can only be satisfied by power over others, government is its favorite field of exercise. Business offers a kind of power, but only to the very successful at the top, and without the dominion and titles and red carpets and motorcycle escorts of public office.

If power corrupts, weakness in the seat of power, with its constant necessity of deals and bribes and compromising arrangements,corrupts even more.

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.

In individuals as in nations, contentment is silent, which tends to unbalance the historical record.

An essential element for good writing is a good ear: One must listen to the sound of one's own prose.

Above all, discard the irrelevant.

Wisdom - meaning judgment acting on experience, common sense, available knowledge, and a decent appreciation of probability.

When people don't have an objective, there's much less dynamic effort, and that makes life a lot less interesting.

Doctrine tied itself into infinite knots over the realities of sex.

The appetite for power is old and irrepressible in humankind, and in its action almost always destructive.

In the midst of events there is no perspective.

Nothing is more satisfying than to write a good sentence.

Governments do not like to face radical remedies; it is easier to let politics predominate.

If all were equalized by death, as the medieval idea constantly emphasized, was it not possible that inequalities on earth were contrary to the will of God?

The conduct of war was so much more interesting than its prevention.

The poets have familiarized more people with history than have the historians.

Policy is formed by preconceptions, by long implanted biases. When information is relayed to policy-makers, they respond in terms of what is already inside their heads and consequently make policy less to fit the facts than to fit the notions and intentions formed out of the mental baggage that has accumulated in their minds since childhood.

In America, where the electoral process is drowning in commercial techniques of fund-raising and image-making, we may have completed a circle back to a selection process as unconcerned with qualifications as that which made Darius King of Persia. ... he whose horse was the first to neigh at sunrise should be King.

Government remains the paramount area of folly because it is there that men seek power over others - only to lose it over themselves.

One constant among the elements of 1914—as of any era—was the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true.

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.

To gain victory over the flesh was the purpose of fasting and celibacy, which denied the pleasures of this world for the sake of reward in the next.

In April 1917 the illusion of isolation was destroyed, America came to the end of innocence, and of the exuberant freedom of bachelor independence. That the responsibilities of world power have not made us happier is no surprise. To help ourselves manage them, we have replaced the illusion of isolation with a new illusion of omnipotence.

That the Jews were unholy was a belief so ingrained by the Church [by the 14th century] that the most devout persons were the harshest in their antipathy, none more so than St. Louis.

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.

Nothing is more satisfying than to write a good sentence. It is no fun to write lumpishly, dully, in prose the reader must plod through like wet sand. But it is a pleasure to achieve, if one can, a clear running prose that is simple yet full of surprises. This does not just happen. It requires skill, hard work, a good ear, and continued practice.

Business, like a jackal, trotted on the heels of war.

The nastiness of women [in the 14th century] was generally perceived at the close of life when a man began to worry about hell, and his sexual desire in any case fading.

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.

Words are seductive and dangerous material, to be used with caution.

The story and study of the past, both recent and distant, will not reveal the future, but it flashes beacon lights along the way and it is a useful nostrum against despair.

Confronted by menace, or what is perceived as menace, governments will usually attempt to smash it, rarely to examine it, understand it, define it.

Misgovernment is of four kinds, often in combination. They are: 1) tyranny or oppression, of which history provides so many well-known examples that they do not need citing; 2) excessive ambition, such as Athens' attempted conquest of Sicily in the Peloponnesian War, Philip II's of England via the Armada, Germany's twice-attempted rule of Europe by a self-conceived master race, Japan's bid for an empire of Asia; 3) incompetence or decadence, as in the case of the late Roman empire, the last Romanovs and the last imperial dynasty of China; and finally 4) folly or perversity.