Barbara Tuchman Quotes - Page 3

Books are the carriers of civilization... Books are humanity in print.

To be a bestseller is not necessarily a measure of quality, but it is a measure of communication.

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

I ask myself, have nations ever declined from a loss of moral sense rather than from physical reasons or the pressure of barbarians? I think that they have.

When every autumn people said it could not last through the winter, and when every spring there was still no end in sight, only the hope that out of it all some good would accrue to mankind kept men and nations fighting. When at last it was over, the war had many diverse results and one dominant one transcending all others: disillusion.

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

Misgovernment is of four kinds, often in combination. They are: 1) tyranny or oppression, of which history provides so many well-known examples that they do not need citing; 2) excessive ambition, such as Athens' attempted conquest of Sicily in the Peloponnesian War, Philip II's of England via the Armada, Germany's twice-attempted rule of Europe by a self-conceived master race, Japan's bid for an empire of Asia; 3) incompetence or decadence, as in the case of the late Roman empire, the last Romanovs and the last imperial dynasty of China; and finally 4) folly or perversity.

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

No female iniquity was more severely condemned than the habit of plucking eyebrows and the hairline to heighten the forehead.

Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled.

Russians, in the knowledge of inexhaustible supplies of manpower, are accustomed to accepting gigantic fatalities with comparative calm.

Nothing is more satisfying than to write a good sentence.

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

No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision.

Completeness is rare in history.

Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library.

To gain victory over the flesh was the purpose of fasting and celibacy, which denied the pleasures of this world for the sake of reward in the next.

The reality of a question is inevitably more complicated than we would like to suppose.

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

That the Jews were unholy was a belief so ingrained by the Church [by the 14th century] that the most devout persons were the harshest in their antipathy, none more so than St. Louis.

We seem to be afflicted by a widespread and eroding reluctance to take any stand on any values, moral, behavioral or esthetic.

The story and study of the past, both recent and distant, will not reveal the future, but it flashes beacon lights along the way and it is a useful nostrum against despair.

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

The nastiness of women [in the 14th century] was generally perceived at the close of life when a man began to worry about hell, and his sexual desire in any case fading.

If all were equalized by death, as the medieval idea constantly emphasized, was it not possible that inequalities on earth were contrary to the will of God?