Barbara W. Tuchman

Quotes

• “Any person who considers himself, and intends to remain, a member of Western society inherits the Western past from Athe...”
• “An event of great agony is bearable only in the belief that it will bring about a better world. When it does not, as in ...”
• “House Speaker Thomas Reed could destroy an argument or expose a fallacy in fewer words than anyone else. His language wa...”
• “Chronicling future appeasing Prime Minister Joseph Chamberlain's rise to Parliament from first-generation commercial int...”
• “No less a bold and pugnacious figure than Winston Churchill broke down and was unable to finish his remarks at the sendo...”
• “Extravagant sartorial display had a purpose. It created the impression of wealth and power on the opponent and pride in ...”
• “The author says one patrician English leader saw his relationship with the populace thusly: He wasn't responsible TO the...”
• “Asked what would be his idea of Heaven, one statesman in 1897 said it would be to "receive a flow of telegrams alternati...”
• “If the historian will submit himself to his material instead of trying to impose himself on his material, then the mater...”
• “The process of gaining power employs means which degrade or brutalize the seeker, who awakes to find that power has been...”
• “When meeting criticism, he would regard it not as something to resent but as a thing to be examined, like an interesting...”
• “The Englishman, as an American observed, felt himself the best-governed citizen in the world, even when in opposition he...”
• “Confronted by menace or what is perceived as menace, governments will usually attempt to smash it, rarely to examine it,...”
• “One English nobleman and statesman read and reread a particular work of literature because it was "the only book which a...”
• “Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and...”
• “Human beings, like plans, prove fallible in the presence of those ingredients that are missing in maneuvers - danger, de...”
• “Our misconception in viewing the past lies in assuming that doubt and fear, permit, protests, violence and hate were not...”
• “Vainglory, however, no matter how much medieval Christianity insisted it was a sin, is a motor of mankind, no more eradi...”
• “Chief among the forces affecting political folly is lust for power, named by Tacitus as "the most flagrant of all passio...”
• “These cumbersome vehicles were as convenient as if dinosaurs had survived to be used by cowboys for driving cattle”
• “The overpowering unimportance of this MAKES ME SPEECHLESS. – Speaker of the House of Representatives Thomas Reed”
• “Between the happening of a historical process and its recognition by rulers, a lag stretches, full of pitfalls.”
• “Advice to young Samuel Gompers that might apply in many other areas: "Learn from socialism, but don't join it.”
• “Books are ... companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of mind. Books are humanity in print.”
• “Now according to German logic, a declaration of war was found to be unnecessary because of imaginary bombings”
• “Why, since folly or perversity is expected of individuals, should we expect anything else from government?”
• “He was always acting, always enveloping himself in artificiality, perhaps to conceal the volcano within.”
• “That he survived, and indeed returned to government, was one of man's occasional triumphs over medicine.”
• “The greatness of the object enabled my mind to support what my strengths of body was scarce equal to.”
• “If they are afraid of revision in the laboratory, truth will never be released except by accident.”
• “Irritability was an occupational disease. Intolerant and intolerable belong in the same category.”
• “His only weakness was the habit of prophesying war within the next fortnight. George Bernard Shaw”
• “Policy was not reconsidered because the governing group had no habit of purposeful consultation.”
• “The limitation prompting folly " was an attitude of superiority so dense as to be impenetrable.”
• “In writing I am seduced by the sound of words and by the interaction of their sound and sense.”
• “The fate of warnings in political affairs is to be futile when the recipient wishes otherwise.”
• “He accomplished wonders of diplomacy on the principle, never give way, and never give offense.”
• “A minister's (cabinet member's) function was not to DO the work but to see that it got done.”
• “How much does a man's effort depend upon the age in which his work is cast? Pope Clement VII”
• “The utility of perseverance in absurdity is more than I could ever discern. Edmund Burke”
• “He believed interim reforms were necessary in order to fix the worker for his destiny.”
• “House speaker Thomas read could see the trend, but he could not have changed himself.”
• “In proportion that property is small, the danger of misusing the franchisee is great.”
• “Government was rarely more than a choice between the disastrous and the unpalatable.”
• “As there would be no more inheritance, there would be no more greed. Peter Kropotkin”
• “What other country has had the privilege of making the world's heart beat faster?”
• “He never hears the truth about himself by not wishing to hear it." Pope Alexander”
• “Far from a source of suffering, their adopted faith had been a source of power.”
• “Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.”
• “To those who think them selves strong, force always seems the easiest solution.”