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
children light law
To ensure that no one gained an advantage over anyone else, commercial law [in the 14th century] prohibited innovation in tools or techniques, underselling below a fixed price, working late by artificial light, employing extra apprentices or wife and underage children, and advertising of wares or praising them to the detriment of others.
law united-states contempt
In the United States we have a society pervaded from top to bottom by contempt for the law.
hurt loss law
It hurt the economic historians, the Marxists and the fabians, to admit that the Ten Hour Bill, the basic piece of 19th century legislation, came down from the top, out of aa nobleman's private feelings about the Gospel, or that the abolition of the slave trade was achieved, not through the operation of some "law" of profit and loss, but peurlet as the result of tyhe new humanitarianism of the Evangelicals.
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.
responsible forgiven persons
To be right and overruled is not forgiven to persons in responsible positions.
technology use purpose
For belligerent purposes, the 14th century, like the 20th, commanded a technology more sophisticated than the mental and moral capacity that guided its use.
war sea history
The fleet sailed to its war base in the North Sea, headed not so much for some rendezvous with glory as for rendezvous with discretion.
age needs bad-times
Human beings of any age need to approve of themselves; the bad times in history come when they cannot.
teacher book humanity
Books are ... companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of mind. Books are humanity in print.