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
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.
desire argument found
Arguments can always be found to turn desire into policy.
military mind battle
Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip.
real gaps breaking-down
When the gap between ideal and real becomes too wide, the system breaks down.
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.
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
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.
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.
military mind comfort
Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.
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.
males female sin
Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female.
elements eras sides
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.
writing want pages
I want the reader to turn the page and keep on turning to the end.