Tuchman's Quotes

Hubert Humphrey advised new members, If you feel an urge to stand up and make a speech attacking Vietnamese policy, don't make it. — Barbara W. Tuchman

The fief of Coucy from the Church; it was now held directly of the King, and its seigneur paid homage only to the King's person. — Barbara W. Tuchman

They resented the patronage they depended upon. — Barbara W. Tuchman

A minister's (cabinet member's) function was not to DO the work but to see that it got done. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Policy was not reconsidered because the governing group had no habit of purposeful consultation. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Only the Church offered an organizing principle, which was the reason for its success, for society cannot bear anarchy. — Barbara W. Tuchman

What other country has had the privilege of making the world's heart beat faster? — Barbara W. Tuchman

To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup. — Barbara Tuchman

When people don't have an objective, there's much less dynamic effort, and that makes life a lot less interesting. — Barbara Tuchman

That he survived, and indeed returned to government, was one of man's occasional triumphs over medicine. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Society's revenge matched its fright. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Everything one has a right to do is not best to be done. Benjamin Franklin — Barbara W. Tuchman

Human behavior is timeless. — Barbara Tuchman

Enormity of the stakes became the new self-hypnosis. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Wisdom - meaning judgment acting on experience, common sense, available knowledge, and a decent appreciation of probability. — Barbara Tuchman

Connection was the cement of the governing class. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Inventive rhetoric is characteristic of true believers. — Barbara W. Tuchman

The costliest myth of our time has been the myth of the Communist monolith. — Barbara Tuchman

The English patrician bloomed in his natural climate. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Human beings of any age need to approve of themselves; the bad times in history come when they cannot. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on [office]," he wrote to a friend, "a rottenness begins in his conduct. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Of England's patrician class, the author writes: It was easy to be agreeable when everything was done to keep them in comfort and ease. — Barbara W. Tuchman

If they are afraid of revision in the laboratory, truth will never be released except by accident. — Barbara W. Tuchman

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. — Barbara Tuchman

Once the divinity of doctrine has been questioned there is no return to perfect faith. — Barbara W. Tuchman

I command, or I keep quiet." Napoleon — Barbara W. Tuchman

The cracking of old and famous structures is slow and internal, while the facade holds. — Barbara W. Tuchman

He had been present in their minds not as a man but as an idea. — Barbara W. Tuchman

That conflict between the reach for the divine and the lure of earthly things was to be the central problem of the Middle Ages. — Barbara W. Tuchman

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. — Barbara Tuchman

The Republic cured me of the Republic. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Party animosity was concealed under a veil of studied courtesy. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Woman [in the 14th century] was the Church's rival, the temptress, the distraction, the obstacle to holiness, the Devil's decoy. — Barbara Tuchman

How much does a man's effort depend upon the age in which his work is cast? Pope Clement VII — Barbara W. Tuchman

The Hundred Years' War, like the crises of the Church in the same period, broke apart medieval unity. — Barbara Tuchman

When a pope's election could not be explained rationally, it was attributed to the Holy Ghost. — Barbara W. Tuchman

An essential element for good writing is a good ear: One must listen to the sound of one's own prose. — Barbara Tuchman

To put away one's own original thoughts in order to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost. — Barbara Tuchman

The writer's object is - or should be - to hold the reader's attention. — Barbara W. Tuchman

But to "settle" the Eastern Question was beyond even Disraeli's power - beyond, it seems, any human power, for it still haunts the world today. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Revolutions produce other men, not new men. Halfway between truth and endless error, the mold of the species is permanent. That is Earth's burden. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Diplomacy's primary law: LEAVE ROOM FOR NEGOTIATION. — Barbara W. Tuchman

England's traditional tolerance was outraged at last. — Barbara W. Tuchman

His decision suggests that an absence of overriding personal ambition together with shrewd common sense are among the essential components of wisdom. — Barbara W. Tuchman

The affair made men feel larger than life. — Barbara W. Tuchman

He believed that rank without power was a sham. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Humanizing war?! You may as well talk of humanizing Hell. Sir John Fisher — Barbara W. Tuchman

No one is is sure of his premise as the man who knows too little. — Barbara W. Tuchman

The utility of perseverance in absurdity is more than I could ever discern. Edmund Burke — Barbara W. Tuchman

Each one of us is serious individually, but together we become frivolous. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Why, since folly or perversity is expected of individuals, should we expect anything else from government? — Barbara W. Tuchman

The castle's predecessor, the Roman villa, had been unfortified, depending on Roman law and the Roman legions for its ramparts. — Barbara W. Tuchman

The Empire had no political cohesion, no capital city, no common laws, common finances, or common officials. It was the relic of a dead ideal. — Barbara W. Tuchman

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. — Barbara Tuchman

Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced — Barbara W. Tuchman

Now according to German logic, a declaration of war was found to be unnecessary because of imaginary bombings — Barbara W. Tuchman

Pessimism is a primary source of passivity, — Barbara W. Tuchman

The tribal pull of patriotism could have no better testimony. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Fateful moments tend to evoke grandeur of speech, especially in French. — Barbara Tuchman

The art of oratory was considered part of the equipment of a statesman. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Anything that protracted a campaign Clausewitz condemned. "Gradual reduction" of the enemy, or a war of attrition, he feared like the pit of hell. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Women were considered the snare of the Devil, while at the same time the cult of the Virgin made one woman the central object of love and adoration. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Proper society did not think about MAKING money, only about spending it. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Mankind's tragedy is that he can draw up blueprints for a better life but he cannot live up to them. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Malignant phenomena do not come out of a golden age. — Barbara W. Tuchman

No single characteristic ever overtakes an entire society. — Barbara W. Tuchman

If he had a little more brains he would be a half-wit. — Barbara W. Tuchman

If I had taken a doctoral degree, it would have stifled any writing capacity. — Barbara W. Tuchman

If wisdom in government eludes us, perhaps courage could substitute-the moral courage to terminate mistakes. — Barbara Tuchman

Liberality in gifts and expenditure which, since his followers lived off it, was extolled as the most admired attribute of a noble. — Barbara W. Tuchman

These cumbersome vehicles were as convenient as if dinosaurs had survived to be used by cowboys for driving cattle — Barbara W. Tuchman

One English nobleman and statesman read and reread a particular work of literature because it was the only book which allowed him to forget politics. — Barbara W. Tuchman

When the gap between ideal and real becomes too wide, the system breaks down. — Barbara W. Tuchman

In the midst of events there is no perspective. — Barbara Tuchman

The greatness of the object enabled my mind to support what my strengths of body was scarce equal to. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled. — Barbara Tuchman

Civilians who volunteer generally wish to escape, not to share, privatizations worse than their own. — Barbara W. Tuchman

In the midst of war and crisis nothing is as clear or as certain as it appears in hindsight — Barbara W. Tuchman

Fate represents the fulfillment of man's expectations of himself. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Every repetition of the choice only hardened the issue. — Barbara W. Tuchman

When commerce with Moslems flourished, zeal for their massacre declined. — Barbara Tuchman

Believing themselves superior in soul, in strength, in energy, industry, and national virtue, Germans felt they deserved the dominion of Europe. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Impunity in such affairs was no longer a matter of course, for the King was Louis IX, a sovereign whose sense of rulership was equal to his piety. — Barbara W. Tuchman

The power to command frequently causes failure to think. — Barbara Tuchman

reproaches himself for recoiling from the stench of the poor and the sick, — Barbara W. Tuchman

In individuals as in nations, contentment is silent, which tends to unbalance the historical record. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Talent for oratory can simulate the need for action and even thought. — Barbara W. Tuchman

I have always been in a condition in which I cannot not write. — Barbara Tuchman

Chief among the forces affecting political folly is lust for power, named by Tacitus as the most flagrant of all passions. — Barbara W. Tuchman

When those who have the title of shepherd play the part of wolves," said Lothar of Saxony, "heresy grows in the garden of the Church. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Washington's incessant need for NEW assessments testifies to uncertainty in the capital. — Barbara W. Tuchman

No experience of the failure of his policy could shake his belief in its essential excellence. — Babara Tuchman

Completeness is rare in history ... — Barbara Tuchman

[T]he obverse of facile emotion in the 14th century was a general insensitivity to the spectacle of pain and death. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Reasonable orders are easy enough to obey; it is capricious, bureaucratic or plain idiotic demands that form the habit of discipline. — Barbara Tuchman

Little attention was paid, because the German people, no matter how hungry, remained obedient. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Fine dressing could not be suppressed despite ever-renewed sumptuary laws which tried especially and repeatedly to outlaw the pointed shoes. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Advice to young Samuel Gompers that might apply in many other areas: Learn from socialism, but don't join it. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Though surnamed the Wise, he was not immune from the occupational disease of rulers: overestimation of their capacity to control events. No — Barbara W. Tuchman