Barbara Tuchman Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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 Tuchman

  Teacher, Book, Sea

  58 Copy quote

• Strong prejudices in an ill-formed mind are hazardous to government, and when combined with a position of power even more so.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Strong, Power, Thinking

  Barbara Tuchman (2015). “The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam”, p.131, Crux Publishing Ltd

  31 Copy quote

• Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Thinking, Government, Self

  Barbara Tuchman (2015). “The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam”, p.13, Crux Publishing Ltd

  31 Copy quote

• Policy is formed by preconceptions, by long implanted biases. When information is relayed to policy-makers, they respond in terms of what is already inside their heads and consequently make policy less to fit the facts than to fit the notions and intentions formed out of the mental baggage that has accumulated in their minds since childhood.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Government, Long, Childhood

  29 Copy quote

• War is the unfolding of miscalculations.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Peace, War, Military

  86 Copy quote

• Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Stupid, Book, Reading

  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

  68 Copy quote

• In America, where the electoral process is drowning in commercial techniques of fund-raising and image-making, we may have completed a circle back to a selection process as unconcerned with qualifications as that which made Darius King of Persia. ... he whose horse was the first to neigh at sunrise should be King.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Horse, Kings, Government

  26 Copy quote

• 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

  Struggle, Men, Giving

  8 Copy quote

• What his imagination is to the poet, facts are to the historian. His exercise of judgment comes in their selection, his art in their arrangement.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Art, Exercise, Imagination

  Barbara W. Tuchman (2011). “Practicing History: Selected Essays”, p.32, Random House

  24 Copy quote

• Books are humanity in print.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Book, Humanity, Print

  40 Copy quote

• 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

  Power, Men, Folly

  Barbara W. Tuchman (2011). “The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam”, p.382, Random House

  7 Copy quote

• One must stop conducting research before one has finished. Otherwise, one will never stop and never finish.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Research, Conducting, Finished

  22 Copy quote

• If power corrupts, weakness in the seat of power, with its constant necessity of deals and bribes and compromising arrangements,corrupts even more.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Power, Weakness, Compromise

  Barbara W. Tuchman (2017). “Stilwell and the American Experience in China: 1911-1945”, p.551, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• The power to command frequently causes failure to think.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Thinking, Causes, Command

  Barbara Tuchman (2015). “The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam”, p.36, Crux Publishing Ltd

  12 Copy quote

• The better part of valor is to spend it learning to live with differences, however hostile, unless and until we can find another planet.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Differences, Conflict, Planets

  15 Copy quote

• To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Firsts, Garments, Legitimacy

  Barbara W. Tuchman (2011). “A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century”, p.399, Random House

  37 Copy quote

• Words are seductive and dangerous material, to be used with caution.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Seductive, Used, Dangerous

  15 Copy quote

• Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Successful, Tyrants, Revolution

  20 Copy quote

• Woman was the Church's rival, the temptress, the distraction, the obstacle to holiness, the Devil's decoy.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Women, Church, Devil

  11 Copy quote

• An essential element for good writing is a good ear: One must listen to the sound of one's own prose.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Writing, Sound, Essentials

  19 Copy quote

• Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Males, Female, Sin

  Barbara W. Tuchman (2011). “A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century”, p.211, Random House

  6 Copy quote

• When people don't have an objective, there's much less dynamic effort, and that makes life a lot less interesting.

  Barbara Tuchman

  People, Interesting, Effort

  8 Copy quote

• Business, like a jackal, trotted on the heels of war.

  Barbara Tuchman

  War, Jackals, Heels

  Barbara W. Tuchman (2011). “A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century”, p.389, Random House

  24 Copy quote

• No economic activity was more irrepressible [in the 14th century] than the investment and lending at interest of money; it was the basis for the rise of the Western capitalist economy and the building of private fortunes-and it was based on the sin of usury.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Capitalist Economy, Usury, Sin

  Barbara Tuchman (2017). “A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century”, p.66, Penguin UK

  7 Copy quote

• The writer's object is - or should be - to hold the reader's attention.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Attention, Should, Reader

  Barbara W. Tuchman (2011). “Practicing History: Selected Essays”, p.89, Random House

  14 Copy quote

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