Barbara Tuchman
It is wiser, I believe, to arrive at theory by way of evidence rather than the other way around.... It is more rewarding, in any case, to assemble the facts first and, in the process of arranging them in narrative form, to discover a theory or a historical generalization emerging of its own accord.Collection: Believe
The Germans could not get over the perfidy of it. It was unbelievable that the English, having degenerated to the stage where suffragettes heckled the Prime Minister and defied the police, were going to fight.Collection: Fighting
Of all the ills that our poor ... society is heir to, the focal one, it seems to me, from which so much of our uneasiness and confusion derive, is the absence of standards.Collection: Confusion
That conflict between the reach for the divine and the lure of earthly things was to be the central problem of the Middle Ages.Collection: Age
To rush in upon an event before its significance has had time to separate from the surrounding circumstances may be enterprising, but is it useful? ... The recent prevalence of these hot histories on publishers' lists raises the question: Should - or perhaps can - history be written while it is still smoking?Collection: History
When commerce with Moslems flourished, zeal for their massacre declined.Collection: Massacres
Money was the crux. Raising money to pay the cost of war was to cause more damage to 14th century society than the physical destruction of war itself.Collection: War
Voluntary self-directed religion was more dangerous to the Church than any number of infidels.Collection: Self
Disaster is rarely as pervasive as it seems from recorded accounts. The fact of being on the record makes it appear continuous and ubiquitous whereas it is more likely to have been sporadic both in time and place.Collection: Records
The clergy [in the 14th century] on the whole were probably no more lecherous or greedy or untrustworthy than other men, but because they were supposed to be better or nearer to God than other men, their failings attracted more attention.Collection: Men
No less a bold and pugnacious figure than Winston Churchill broke down and was unable to finish his remarks at the sendoff of the British Expeditionary Force into the maelstrom of World War I in Europe.Collection: War
While husbands and lovers in the stories are of all kinds, ranging from sympathetic to disgusting, women are invariably deceivers: inconstant, unscrupulous, quarrelsome, querulous, lecherous, shameless, although not necessarily all of these at once.Collection: Husband
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 the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.Collection: Sunset
The Hundred Years' War, like the crises of the Church in the same period, broke apart medieval unity.Collection: War
To be right and overruled is not forgiven to persons in responsible positions.Collection: Responsible
The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heardCollection: Past
A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests.Collection: Government
Confronted by menace, or what is perceived as menace, governments will usually attempt to smash it, rarely to examine it, understand it, define it.Collection: Government
Nothing is more satisfying than to write a good sentence. It is no fun to write lumpishly, dully, in prose the reader must plod through like wet sand. But it is a pleasure to achieve, if one can, a clear running prose that is simple yet full of surprises. This does not just happen. It requires skill, hard work, a good ear, and continued practice.Collection: Running
In the United States we have a society pervaded from top to bottom by contempt for the law.Collection: Law
The appetite for power is old and irrepressible in humankind, and in its action almost always destructive.Collection: Power
Above all, discard the irrelevant.Collection: What Matters
In the midst of events there is no perspective.Collection: Perspective
Human behavior is timeless.Collection: Behavior
The conduct of war was so much more interesting than its prevention.Collection: War
Wisdom - meaning judgment acting on experience, common sense, available knowledge, and a decent appreciation of probability.Collection: Wisdom
in the midst of war and crisis nothing is as clear or as certain as it appears in hindsightCollection: War
In April 1917 the illusion of isolation was destroyed, America came to the end of innocence, and of the exuberant freedom of bachelor independence. That the responsibilities of world power have not made us happier is no surprise. To help ourselves manage them, we have replaced the illusion of isolation with a new illusion of omnipotence.Collection: Responsibility
Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change, windows on the world, and (as a poet has said) "lighthouses erected in the sea of time." They are companions , teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.Collection: Teacher
To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse. They are of two kinds: the library of published material, books, pamphlets, periodicals, and the archive of unpublished papers and documents.Collection: Book
Chief among the forces affecting political folly is lust for power, named by Tacitus as "the most flagrant of all the passions." Because it can only be satisfied by power over others, government is its favorite field of exercise. Business offers a kind of power, but only to the very successful at the top, and without the dominion and titles and red carpets and motorcycle escorts of public office.Collection: Passion
Governments do not like to face radical remedies; it is easier to let politics predominate.Collection: Government
One constant among the elements of 1914—as of any era—was the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true.Collection: Alternatives
When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.Collection: Reason
After absorbing the news of today, one expects to face a world consisting entirely of strikes, crimes, power failures, broken water mains, stalled trains, school shutdowns, muggers, drug addicts, neo-Nazis, and rapists. The fact is that one can come home in the evening, on a lucky day, without having encountered more than one or two of these phenomena.Collection: School
Friendship of a kind that cannot easily be reversed tomorrow must have its roots in common interests and shared beliefs.Collection: Friendship
To be a bestseller is not necessarily a measure of quality, but it is a measure of communication.Collection: Book
Books are the carriers of civilization... Books are humanity in print.Collection: Book
If wisdom in government eludes us, perhaps courage could substitute-the moral courage to terminate mistakes.Collection: Courage
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.Collection: Loss
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.Collection: Hope
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.Collection: War
Arguments can always be found to turn desire into policy.Collection: Desire
No female iniquity was more severely condemned than the habit of plucking eyebrows and the hairline to heighten the forehead.Collection: Eyebrows
Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled.Collection: Book
When the gap between ideal and real becomes too wide, the system breaks down.Collection: Real
Russians, in the knowledge of inexhaustible supplies of manpower, are accustomed to accepting gigantic fatalities with comparative calm.Collection: Calm
Nothing is more satisfying than to write a good sentence.Collection: Writing
Completeness is rare in history.Collection: History