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
confusion heirs absence
Of all the ills that our poor ... society is heir to, the focal one, it seems to me, from which so much of our uneasiness and confusion derive, is the absence of standards.
smart men rome
Rome had Caesar, a man of remarkable governing talents, although it must be said that a ruler who arouses opponents to resort to assassination is probably not as smart as he ought to be.
past light despair
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.
moral reluctance seems
We seem to be afflicted by a widespread and eroding reluctance to take any stand on any values, moral, behavioral or esthetic.
calm accepting supplies
Russians, in the knowledge of inexhaustible supplies of manpower, are accustomed to accepting gigantic fatalities with comparative calm.
war hindsight certain
in the midst of war and crisis nothing is as clear or as certain as it appears in hindsight
behavior timeless human-behavior
Human behavior is timeless.
tragedy development facts
The fact of being reported increases the apparent extent of a deplorable development by a factor of ten.
law united-states contempt
In the United States we have a society pervaded from top to bottom by contempt for the law.
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.
strong power thinking
Strong prejudices in an ill-formed mind are hazardous to government, and when combined with a position of power even more so.
power action appetite
The appetite for power is old and irrepressible in humankind, and in its action almost always destructive.
reality satire exaggeration
satire is a wrapping of exaggeration around a core of reality.
war interesting prevention
The conduct of war was so much more interesting than its prevention.