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
government decision faces
No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision.
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.
government pursuit periods
A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests.
government faces easier
Governments do not like to face radical remedies; it is easier to let politics predominate.
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.
thinking government self
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.
government long childhood
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.
horse kings government
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.
bankers books books-and-reading humanity treasures
Books are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.
writing conditions
I have always been in a condition in which I cannot not write.
writing sentences satisfying
Nothing is more satisfying than to write a good sentence.
across alive arouse carry consciousness constantly desk die emotion image man phrase reader searches sees unless wants word writer writes
No writing comes alive unless the writer sees across his desk a reader, and searches constantly for the word or phrase which will carry the image he wants the reader to see, and arouse the emotion he wants him to feel. Without consciousness of a live reader, what a man writes will die on his page.
teaching learning faculty
Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced
eye honor different
Honor wears different coats to different eyes.