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
running war cost
The social damage was not in the failure but in the undertaking, which was expensive. The cost of war was the poison running through the 14th century.
lying government common-sense
His (Deschamps') complaint of court life was the same as is made of government at the top in any age: it was composed of hypocrisy, flattery, lying, paying and betraying; it was where calumny and cupidity reigned, common sense lacked, truth dared not appear, and where to survive one had to be deaf, blind, and dumb.
christian giving anxiety
Whatever solace the Christian faith could give was balanced by the anxiety it generated.
perspective events midst
In the midst of events there is no perspective.
book artist fiction
I have always felt like an artist when I work on a book. I see no reason why the word should always be confined to writers of fiction and poetry.
struggle men giving
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.
massacres commerce zeal
When commerce with Moslems flourished, zeal for their massacre declined.
age conflict problem
That conflict between the reach for the divine and the lure of earthly things was to be the central problem of the Middle Ages.
hard-work stories research
Historians who stuff in every item of research they have found, every shoelace and telephone call of a biographical subject, are not doing the hard work of selecting and shaping a readable story.
research conducting finished
One must stop conducting research before one has finished. Otherwise, one will never stop and never finish.
book communication quality
To be a bestseller is not necessarily a measure of quality, but it is a measure of communication.
art exercise imagination
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.
what-matters irrelevant
Above all, discard the irrelevant.
doors library closing-doors
Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library.