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
men attention untrustworthy
The clergy [in the 14th century] on the whole were probably no more lecherous or greedy or untrustworthy than other men, but because they were supposed to be better or nearer to God than other men, their failings attracted more attention.
speech moments evoke
Fateful moments tend to evoke grandeur of speech, especially in French.
reality complicated
The reality of a question is inevitably more complicated than we would like to suppose.
interesting people effort
When people don't have an objective, there's much less dynamic effort, and that makes life a lot less interesting.
successful tyrants revolution
Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.
war noble knighthood
More than a code of manners in war and love, Chivalry was a moral system, governing the whole of noble life...
weakness compromise power-corrupts
If power corrupts, weakness in the seat of power, with its constant necessity of deals and bribes and compromising arrangements,corrupts even more.
women church devil
Woman [in the 14th century] was the Church's rival, the temptress, the distraction, the obstacle to holiness, the Devil's decoy.
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.
school home lucky-day
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.
passion successful exercise
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.
government menace
Confronted by menace, or what is perceived as menace, governments will usually attempt to smash it, rarely to examine it, understand it, define it.
records facts disaster
Disaster is rarely as pervasive as it seems from recorded accounts. The fact of being on the record makes it appear continuous and ubiquitous whereas it is more likely to have been sporadic both in time and place.
house leaving cards
For me, the card catalog has been a companion all my working life. To leave it is like leaving the house one was brought up in.