Tuchman Quotes & Sayings

England's traditional tolerance was outraged at last. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Oversimplified perhaps, this in essence is the problem known to nineteenth-century diplomacy as the Eastern Question. — 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

He was always the bridge, between men as well as between ideas. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Everything took on the color of blood. — Barbara W. Tuchman

It is worth noting the qualities this historian ascribes to them: they were fearless, high-principled, deeply versed in ancient and modern political thought, astute and pragmatic, unafraid of experiment, and - this is significant - convinced of man's power to improve his condition through the use of intelligence. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Have we," he wondered, "conceived a merely human project and then imagined it to be a decree of the Almighty? — Barbara W. Tuchman

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

Planted firmly across the path of change, operating warily, shrewdly yet with passionate conviction in defence of the existing order, was a peer who was Chancellor of Oxford University for life, had twice held the India Office, twice the Foreign Office and was now Prime Minister for the third time. He was Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, Lord Salisbury, ninth Earl and third Marquess of his line. — Barbara W. Tuchman

One by one, members of the Commons, speaking in turn at a lectern in the center of the chamber, added their charges and complaints. The King's councillors, they said, had grown rich at the cost of impoverishing the nation; they had deceived the King and wasted his revenues, causing the repeated demands for fresh subsidies. The people were too poor and feeble to endure further taxation. Let Parliament discuss instead how the King might maintain the war out of his own resources. — Barbara W. Tuchman

the Regents' dislike of the social "leveling" they sensed in the Revolution was stronger. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Terrible worm in an iron cocoon, as he was called in an anonymous poem, the knight rode on a saddle rising in a high ridge above the horse's backbone with his feet resting in very long stirrups so that he was virtually standing up and able to deliver tremendous swinging blows from side to side with any one of his armory of weapons. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Rome had Caesar, a man of remarkable governing talents, although it must be said that a ruler who arouses opponents to resort to assassination is probably not as smart as he ought to be. — Barbara Tuchman

Peruzzi, secured on expected revenue from the wool tax. When this brought in too little and Edward could not repay, the drain on the Italian companies bankrupted them. The Peruzzi failed in 1343, the Bardi suspended a year later, and their crash brought down a third firm, the Acciaiuioli. Capital vanished, stores and workshops closed, wages and purchases stopped. When, by the malignant chance that seemed to hound the 14th century, economic devastation in Florence and Siena was followed first by famine in 1347 and then by plague, it could not but seem to — Barbara W. Tuchman

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

Government remains the paramount area of folly because it is there that men seek power over others - only to lose it over themselves. — Barbara Tuchman

He had become, through a combination of heritage and character, a keeper of the national conscience. — Barbara W. Tuchman

The symptoms of depression, despair or melancholy, and lethargy were considered by the Church the sin of accidia or sloth. — Barbara W. Tuchman

He said, McKinley was going around the country shouting prosperity when there was no prosperity for the poor man. — Barbara W. Tuchman

The Church [in the 14th century] gave ceremony and dignity to lives that had little of either. It was the source of beauty and art to which all had some access and which many helped to create. — Barbara Tuchman

It hurt the economic historians, the Marxists and the fabians, to admit that the Ten Hour Bill, the basic piece of 19th century legislation, came down from the top, out of aa nobleman's private feelings about the Gospel, or that the abolition of the slave trade was achieved, not through the operation of some "law" of profit and loss, but peurlet as the result of tyhe new humanitarianism of the Evangelicals. — Barbara Tuchman

The appetite for power is old and irrepressible in humankind, and in its action almost always destructive. — Barbara Tuchman

Money was evil, beauty vain, and both were transitory. Ambition was pride, desire for gain was avarice, desire of the flesh was lust, desire for honor, even for knowledge and beauty, was vainglory. Insofar as these diverted man from seeking the life of the spirit, they were sinful. — Barbara W. Tuchman

the Archimedean point where the lever can be applied." At — Barbara W. Tuchman

Little attention was paid, because the German people, no matter how hungry, remained obedient. — Barbara W. Tuchman

No one is so sure of his premises as the man who knows too little. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed. — Barbara Tuchman

Impunity in such affairs was no longer a matter of course, for the King was Louis IX, a sovereign whose sense of rulership was equal to his piety. — Barbara W. Tuchman

The blood libel took possession of the popular mind most rabidly in Germany, where the well-poisoning charge too had originated in the 12th century. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Something in me broke and I was never the same thereafter. — Barbara W. Tuchman

They resented the patronage they depended upon. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Awful momentum makes carrying through easier than calling off folly. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Although the mortality rate was erratic, ranging from one fifth in some places to nine tenths or almost total elimination in others, the overall estimate of modern demographers has settled - for the area extending from India to Iceland - around the same figure expressed in Froissart's casual words: "a third of the world died. — 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

House speaker Thomas read could see the trend, but he could not have changed himself. — Barbara W. Tuchman

TO BE "THE SEWER OF CHRISTENDOM and drain all the discords out of it" was the primary function of the Crusades, — Barbara W. Tuchman

The proud tower built up through the great age of European civilization was an edifice of grandeur and passion, of riches and beauty and dark cellars. Its inhabitants lived, as compared to a later time, with more self-reliance, more confidence, more hope; greater magnificence, extravagance and elegance; more careless ease, more gaiety, more pleasure in each other's company and conversation, more injustice and hypocrisy, more misery and want, more sentiment including false sentiment, less sufferance of mediocrity, more dignity in work, more delight in nature, more zest. The Old World had much that has since been lost, whatever may have been gained. Looking back on it from 1915, Emile Verhaeren, the Belgian Socialist poet, dedicated his pages, With emotion, to the man I used to be. — Barbara W. Tuchman

For each man that shall be damned shall be damned by his own guilt, and each man that is saved shall be saved by his own merit. Unperceived, here was the start of the modern world. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Fate represents the fulfillment of man's expectations of himself. — Barbara W. Tuchman

I want the reader to turn the page and keep on turning until the end. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Eventually the United States became the latter arsenal and bank of the allies, and acquired a direct interest in allied victory that was to bemuse the post war apostles of economic determinism for a long time. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Arguments can always be found to turn desire into policy. — Barbara W. Tuchman

The writer's object should be to hold the reader's attention. I want the reader to turn the page and keep on turning until the end. This is accomplished only when the narrative moves steadily ahead, not when it comes to a weary standstill, overloaded with every item uncovered in the research. — Barbara W. Tuchman

For a knight to ride in a carriage was against the principles of chivalry and he never under any circumstances rode a mare. — Barbara W. Tuchman

The early removal from school of future officers of Britain's seapower, leaving them unacquainted with the subject matter and ideas of the distant and recent past, may account for the incapacity of no military thinking in a world that devoted itself to military action. With little thought of strategy, no study of the theory of war or of planned objective, war's glorious art may have been glorious, but with individual exceptions, it was more or less mindless. — Barbara W. Tuchman

History was finite and contained within comprehensible limits. It began with the Creation and was scheduled to end in a not indefinitely remote future with the Second Coming, which was the hope of afflicted mankind, followed by the Day of Judgment. Within that span, man was not subject to social or moral progress because his goal was the next world, not betterment in this. In this world he was assigned to ceaseless struggle against himself in which he might attain individual progress and even victory, but collective betterment would only come in the final union with God. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Confronted by menace or what is perceived as menace, governments will usually attempt to smash it, rarely to examine it, understand it, and drefine it. — Barbara W. Tuchman

The fief of Coucy from the Church; it was now held directly of the King, and its seigneur paid homage only to the King's person. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Books are humanity in print. — Barbara W. Tuchman

The Republic cured me of the Republic. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Supposed to be commissioned by the Church, the pardoners would sell absolution for any sin from gluttony to homicide, cancel any vow of chastity or fasting, remit any penance for money, most of which they pocketed. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Was compared by Dante to both a slave and a brothel. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Fireflies were the souls of unbaptized dead infants. — Barbara W. Tuchman

When at last it was over, the war had many diverse results and one dominant one transcending all others: disillusion. — Barbara W. Tuchman

There was no dissent, no strike, no protest, no hesitation to shoulder a rifle against fellow workers of another land. When the call came, the worker, whom Marx declared to have no Fatherland identified himself with country, not class. He turned out to be a member of the national family like anyone else. The force of his antagonism which was supposed to topple capitalism found a better target in the foreigner. The working class went to war willingly, even eagerly, like the middle class, like the upper class, like the species. — Barbara W. Tuchman

It was manifest that a malady of such horrors, stenches, and agonies, and especially one bringing the dismal despair that settled upon its victims before they died, was not a plague "natural" to mankind but "a chastisement from Heaven. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Stimulated by the enemy's presence on the Loire in the center of France, the nobles responded to the summons, whatever their sentiments toward the King. They came from Auvergne, Berry, Burgundy, Lorraine, Hainault, Artois, Vermandois, Picardy, Brittany, Normandy. "No knight and no squire remained at home," wrote the chroniclers; here was gathered "all the flower of France. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Every incident in the Old Testament was considered to pre-figure in allegory what was to come in the New. — Barbara W. Tuchman

History never repeats itself," said Voltaire; "man always does." Thucydides, — Barbara W. Tuchman

Had I known that these legs were to carry a Lord Chancellor, I would have taken better care of them when I was a lad. Duke of Grafton — Barbara W. Tuchman

Canada was regarded as a hostage to restrain Britain, — Barbara W. Tuchman

Of England's patrician class, the author writes: It was easy to be agreeable when everything was done to keep them in comfort and ease. — Barbara W. Tuchman

A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests. Mankind, it seems, makes a poorer performance of government than of almost any other human activity. In this sphere, wisdom, which may be defined as the exercise of judgment acting on experience, common sense and available information, is less operative and more frustrated than it should be. Why do holders of high office so often act contrary to the way reason points and enlightened self-interest suggests? Why does intelligent mental process seem so often not to function? — Barbara W. Tuchman

After the war, when my husband came home, we had two more children, and domesticity for a while prevailed combined with beginning the work I had always wanted to do, which was writing a book. — 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

To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse. — Barbara Tuchman

One Cardinal entered his cathedral for the first time at his funeral. — Barbara W. Tuchman

In theory the Holy Roman Emperor exercised a temporal sway matching the spiritual rule of the Pope over the universal community under God. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Far from a source of suffering, their adopted faith had been a source of power. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Once people envisioned the possibility of change in a fixed order, the end of an age of submission came in sight; the turn to individual conscience lay ahead. To that extent the Black Death may have been the unrecognized beginning of modern man. — Barbara W. Tuchman

The art of oratory was considered part of the equipment of a statesman. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Eyeglasses had been in use since the turn of the century, allowing old people to read more in their later years and greatly extending the scholar's life of study. The manufacture of paper as a cheaper and more plentiful material than parchment was beginning to make possible multiple copies and wider distribution of literary works. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Wicked ecclesiastics who show the worst example to the people," and, above all, nobles who empty the purses of the poor by their extravagance, and disdain them for "lowness of blod or foulenesse of body," for deformed shape of body or limb, for dullness of wit and uncunning of craft, and deign not to speak to them, and who are themselves stuffed with pride - of ancestry, fortune, gentility, possessions, power, comeliness, strength, children, treasure - "prowde in lokynge, prowde in spekyng, ... prowde in goinge, standynge and sytting." All would be drawn by fiends to Hell on the Day of Judgment. — 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

It was one of the peculiar malfunctions of technology that shore batteries on the islands were generally of inadequate caliber and range to knock out a ship approaching with hostile intent. One is moved to wonder why, if a 10-pounder gun could be mounted on the rolling deck of a sailing vessel, the same or larger could not be mounted on land? — Barbara W. Tuchman

No single characteristic ever overtakes an entire society. — Barbara W. Tuchman

In the case of a Gascon seigneur of the 14th century who left 100 livres to those whom I deflowered, if they can be found. — Barbara W. Tuchman

It might be the destiny of the Jewish race," he said, "to be the bridge between Asia and Europe, to bring the spirituality of Asia to Europe and the vitality of Europe to Asia." At — Barbara W. Tuchman

As a young cavalry officer out of St-Cyr, de Mun first became acquainted with the lives and problems of the poor through the charitable work of the Society of St-Vincent de Paul in his garrison town. During the Commune, as an aide to General Galliffet, who commanded the battalion that fired on the insurgent Communards, he saw a dying man brought in on a litter. The guard said he was an "insurgent," whereupon the man, raising himself up, cried with his last strength, "No, it is you who are the insurgents!" and died. In the force of that cry directed at himself, his uniform, his family, his Church, de Mun had recognized the reason for civil war and vowed himself to heal the cleavage. He blamed the Commune on "the apathy of the bourgeois class and the ferocious hatred for society of the working class." The responsible ones, he had been told by one of the St. Vincent brothers, were "you, the rich, the great, the happy ones of life who pass by the people without seeing them." To — Barbara W. Tuchman

Everything one has a right to do is not best to be done. Benjamin Franklin — Barbara W. Tuchman

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

The social damage was not in the failure but in the undertaking, which was expensive. The cost of war was the poison running through the 14th century. — Barbara Tuchman

No nation in the world has so many drastic problems squeezed into so small a space, under such urgent pressure of time and heavy burden of history, as Israel. — Barbara Tuchman

(Present-day anthropologists defend the thesis that the American Indians were in fact originally Mongolians who crossed over by the Bering Strait.) — Barbara W. Tuchman

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

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. — Barbara Tuchman

They were twelve days in which world history wavered between two courses and the Germans came so close to victory that they reached out and touched it between the Aisne and the Marne. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Business, like a jackal, trotted on the heels of war. — Barbara Tuchman

A minister's (cabinet member's) function was not to DO the work but to see that it got done. — Barbara W. Tuchman

German soldiers, posted as informers, were found dressed as peasants, even as peasant women. The latter were discovered, presumably in the course of non-military action, by their government issued underwear; but many were probably never caught, it being impossible, General Gourko regretfully admitted, to lift the skirts of every female in East Prussia. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced — Barbara W. Tuchman

Charles's old ally Don Enrique, King of Castile, also died before taking sides, and his son, Juan I, though heavily pressed by Charles V to support Clement, preferred to maintain "neutrality," saying that, while faithful to the French alliance, he could not go against the conscience of his subjects. Common people, nobility, clerics, learned men, he wrote, were all Urbanist. "What government, O wise prince," he pointedly inquired of Charles, "has ever succeeded in triumphing over public conscience supported by reason? What punishments are available to subjugate a free soul? — Barbara W. Tuchman

His one essay in love had exhausted his powers in that direction. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Although the defects of the Russian Army were notorious, although the Russian winter, not the Russian Army, had turned Napoleon back from Moscow, although it had been defeated on its own soil by the French and British in the Crimea, although the Turks in 1877 had outfought it at the siege of Plevna and only succumbed later to overwhelming numbers, although the Japanese had outfought it in Manchuria, a myth of its invincibility prevailed. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Books are carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. They are engines of change, windows of the world, lighthouses erected in the sea of time. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Henry Adams, like most people, saw society in his own image. — Barbara W. Tuchman

The power to command frequently causes failure to think. — Barbara Tuchman

Bull of September 1348 in which he said that Christians who imputed the pestilence to the Jews had been "seduced by that liar, the Devil," and that the charge of well-poisoning and ensuing massacres were a "horrible thing." He pointed out that "by a mysterious decree of God" the plague was afflicting all peoples, including Jews; that it raged in places where no Jews lived, and that elsewhere they were victims like everyone else; therefore the charge that they caused it was "without plausibility." He urged the clergy to take Jews under their protection as he himself offered to do in Avignon, but his voice was hardly heard against local animus. — Barbara W. Tuchman

When the gap between ideal and real becomes too wide, the system breaks down. — Barbara W. Tuchman

In the woe of the century no factor caused more trouble than the persistent lag between the growth of the state and the means of state financing. While centralized government was developing, taxation was still encased in the concept that taxes represented an emergency measure requiring consent. — Barbara W. Tuchman