All Barbara Tuchman Quotes
- 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… Antipathy
- While husbands and lovers in the stories [of the 14th century] are of all kinds, ranging from sympathetic to disgusting, women are invariably deceivers: inconstant,… All
- 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… Celibacy
- 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… Any
- Woman [in the 14th century] was the Church's rival, the temptress, the distraction, the obstacle to holiness, the Devil's decoy. Century
- No female iniquity was more severely condemned [in the 14th century] than the habit of plucking eyebrows and the hairline to heighten the forehead. Century
- Friendship of a kind that cannot easily be reversed tomorrow must have its roots in common interests and shared beliefs. Belief
- Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Book
- War is the unfolding of miscalculations. Anti War
- To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse. Even Muse
- Diplomacy means all the wicked devices of the Old World, spheres of influence, balances of power, secret treaties, triple alliances, and, during the interim period,… All
- Books are humanity in print. Book
- Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general. Comfort
- Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced Almost Never
- The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history's clock it was sunset, and… Ben
- Human beings of any age need to approve of themselves; the bad times in history come when they cannot. Age
- When the gap between ideal and real becomes too wide, the system breaks down. Becomes
- For belligerent purposes, the 14th century, like the 20th, commanded a technology more sophisticated than the mental and moral capacity that guided its use. Belligerent
- Books are ... companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of mind. Books are humanity in print. Bankers
- Human beings, like plans, prove fallible in the presence of those ingredients that are missing in maneuvers - danger, death, and live ammunition. Ammunition