Barbara Tuchman Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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“Books are the carriers of civilization. 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 (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.”
-- Barbara TuchmanSource : Barbara Wertheim Tuchman, Center for the Book, Authors' League of America (1980). “The Book: A Lecture Sponsored by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress and the Authors' League of America, Presented at the Library of Congress October 17, 1979”, Library of Congress
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“War is the unfolding of miscalculations.”
-- Barbara Tuchman -
“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.”
-- Barbara Tuchman -
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“An essential element for good writing is a good ear: One must listen to the sound of one's own prose.”
-- Barbara Tuchman -
“Books are the carriers of civilization... .....Books are humanity in print.”
-- Barbara Tuchman -
“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.”
-- Barbara Tuchman -
“Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library.”
-- Barbara Tuchman -
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“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 They are of two kinds: the library of published material, books, pamphlets, periodicals, and the archive of unpublished papers and documents.”
-- Barbara Tuchman -
“Modern historians have suggested that in his last years he (Richard II) was overtaken by mental disease, but that is only a modern view of the malfunction common to 14th century rulers: inability to inhibit impulse.”
-- Barbara Tuchman -
“When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.”
-- Barbara Tuchman -
“The ills and disorders of the 14th century could not be without consequence. Times were to grow worse over the next fifty-odd years until at some imperceptible moment, by the some mysterious chemistry, energies were refreshed, ideas broke out of the mold of the Middle Ages into new realms, and humanity found itself redirected.”
-- Barbara Tuchman -
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“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.”
-- Barbara Tuchman -
“The Hundred Years' War, like the crises of the Church in the same period, broke apart medieval unity.”
-- Barbara Tuchman -
“bureaucracy, safely repeating today what it did yesterday, rolls on as ineluctably as some vast computer, which, once penetrated by error, duplicates it forever.”
-- Barbara Tuchman -
“To be a bestseller is not necessarily a measure of quality, but it is a measure of communication.”
-- Barbara Tuchman -
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“In the search for meaning we must not forget that the gods (or God, for that matter) are a concept of the human mind; they are the creatures of man, not vice versa. They are needed and invented to give meaning and purpose to the struggle that is life on Earth, to explain strange and irregular phenomena of nature, haphazard events and, above all, irrational human conduct. They exist to bear the burden of all things that cannot be comprehended except by supernatural intervention or design.”
-- Barbara Tuchman -
“Governments do not like to face radical remedies; it is easier to let politics predominate.”
-- Barbara Tuchman -
“If it is not profitable for the common good that authority should be retained, it ought to be relinquished.”
-- Barbara Tuchman -
“In individuals as in nations, contentment is silent, which tends to unbalance the historical record.”
-- Barbara Tuchman -
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“Doctrine tied itself into infinite knots over the realities of sex.”
-- Barbara Tuchman -
“For most people reform meant relief from ecclesiastical extortions.”
-- Barbara Tuchman -
“To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.”
-- Barbara Tuchman -
“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, appeasement of Fascism.”
-- Barbara Tuchman -
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“To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup.”
-- Barbara TuchmanSource : Barbara W. Tuchman (2011). “A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century”, p.399, Random House
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“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 -
“His (Deschamps') complaint of court life was the same as is made of government at the top in any age: it was composed of hypocrisy, flattery, lying, paying and betraying; it was where calumny and cupidity reigned, common sense lacked, truth dared not appear, and where to survive one had to be deaf, blind, and dumb.”
-- Barbara Tuchman -
“In the midst of events there is no perspective.”
-- Barbara Tuchman -
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“Whatever solace the Christian faith could give was balanced by the anxiety it generated.”
-- Barbara Tuchman -
“Voluntary self-directed religion was more dangerous to the Church than any number of infidels.”
-- Barbara Tuchman
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