Barbara W. Tuchman Quotes

He had become, through a combination of heritage and character, a keeper of the national conscience.
Barbara W. Tuchman
Society's revenge matched its fright.
Barbara W. Tuchman
To those who think them selves strong, force always seems the easiest solution.
Barbara W. Tuchman
In individuals as in nations, contentment is silent, which tends to unbalance the historical record.
Barbara W. Tuchman
The Englishman, as an American observed, felt himself the best-governed citizen in the world, even when in opposition he believed the incumbents were ruining the country.
Barbara W. Tuchman
Extravagant sartorial display had a purpose. It created the impression of wealth and power on the opponent and pride in the wearer which has been lost sight of in our nervously egalitarian times.
Barbara W. Tuchman
Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.
Barbara W. Tuchman
Civilians who volunteer generally wish to escape, not to share, privatizations worse than their own.
Barbara W. Tuchman
As there would be no more inheritance, there would be no more greed. Peter Kropotkin
Barbara W. Tuchman
Proper society did not think about MAKING money, only about spending it.
Barbara W. Tuchman
Talent for oratory can simulate the need for action and even thought.
Barbara W. Tuchman
Clearly prize money received more serious attention than scurvy or signals.
Barbara W. Tuchman
Each one of us is serious individually, but together we become frivolous.
Barbara W. Tuchman
He was always the bridge, between men as well as between ideas.
Barbara W. Tuchman
He seemed less in need of a secretary than of someone to listen to him.
Barbara W. Tuchman
The love of humanity does not prevent us from being good journalists.
Barbara W. Tuchman
He wanted AFFIRMATION rather than INFORMATION.
Barbara W. Tuchman
One Cardinal entered his cathedral for the first time at his funeral.
Barbara W. Tuchman
Far from a source of suffering, their adopted faith had been a source of power.
Barbara W. Tuchman
He believed interim reforms were necessary in order to fix the worker for his destiny.
Barbara W. Tuchman
The affair made men feel larger than life.
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
He believed that rank without power was a sham.
Barbara W. Tuchman
The greatness of the object enabled my mind to support what my strengths of body was scarce equal to.
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
A great imperative imparts a wonderful impulse to the spirit.
Barbara W. Tuchman
Human beings, like plans, prove fallible in the presence of those ingredients that are missing in maneuvers - danger, death, and live ammunition.
Barbara W. Tuchman
His one essay in love had exhausted his powers in that direction.
Barbara W. Tuchman
England's traditional tolerance was outraged at last.
Barbara W. Tuchman
That he survived, and indeed returned to government, was one of man's occasional triumphs over medicine.
Barbara W. Tuchman
He accomplished wonders of diplomacy on the principle, never give way, and never give offense.
Barbara W. Tuchman
The limitation prompting folly " was an attitude of superiority so dense as to be impenetrable.
Barbara W. Tuchman
He never hears the truth about himself by not wishing to hear it." Pope Alexander
Barbara W. Tuchman
His only weakness was the habit of prophesying war within the next fortnight. George Bernard Shaw
Barbara W. Tuchman
Enormity of the stakes became the new self-hypnosis.
Barbara W. Tuchman
In proportion that property is small, the danger of misusing the franchisee is great.
Barbara W. Tuchman
Our misconception in viewing the past lies in assuming that doubt and fear, permit, protests, violence and hate were not equally present.
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
Chronicling future appeasing Prime Minister Joseph Chamberlain's rise to Parliament from first-generation commercial interests rather than the aristocracy, the author diagnoses even then that he had no center outside himself.
Barbara W. Tuchman
He had the ruthlessness of uninterrupted success.
Barbara W. Tuchman
Let us retreat when we can, not when we must. Lord Chatham
Barbara W. Tuchman
Folly is a child of power.
Barbara W. Tuchman
Policy was not reconsidered because the governing group had no habit of purposeful consultation.
Barbara W. Tuchman
Awful momentum makes carrying through easier than calling off folly.
Barbara W. Tuchman
The fate of warnings in political affairs is to be futile when the recipient wishes otherwise.
Barbara W. Tuchman
If they are afraid of revision in the laboratory, truth will never be released except by accident.
Barbara W. Tuchman
When meeting criticism, he would regard it not as something to resent but as a thing to be examined, like an interesting beetle. "That's a curious view, not uninteresting.
Barbara W. Tuchman
No one is is sure of his premise as the man who knows too little.
Barbara W. Tuchman
Humanizing war?! You may as well talk of humanizing Hell. Sir John Fisher
Barbara W. Tuchman
The overpowering unimportance of this MAKES ME SPEECHLESS. – Speaker of the House of Representatives Thomas Reed
Barbara W. Tuchman
Everything took on the color of blood.
Barbara W. Tuchman
Even the respectable have a small anarchist hidden on the inside.
Barbara W. Tuchman
Irritability was an occupational disease. Intolerant and intolerable belong in the same category.
Barbara W. Tuchman
Disorder is the least tolerable up sinful conditions.
Barbara W. Tuchman
Why, since folly or perversity is expected of individuals, should we expect anything else from government?
Barbara W. Tuchman
Strong prejudices in an ill-formed mind are hazardous to government.
Barbara W. Tuchman
All this visible greatness was really one with Nineveh and Tyre.
Barbara W. Tuchman
The scene is France. The theater is the world.
Barbara W. Tuchman
Malignant phenomena do not come out of a golden age.
Barbara W. Tuchman
Asked what would be his idea of Heaven, one statesman in 1897 said it would be to "receive a flow of telegrams alternating news of a British victory by sea and a British victory by land.
Barbara W. Tuchman