Quotes by Barbara W. Tuchman

Barbara W. Tuchman

American historian

Lived from: 1912 - 1989

Category: History and sociology Country: FlagUnited States

Born: 30 january 1912 Died: 6 february 1989

Quotes 41 till 60 of 64.

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  • 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 his sexual desire in any case fading.
    ― Barbara W. Tuchman
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  • The open frontier, the hardships of homesteading from scratch, the wealth of natural resources, the whole vast challenge of a continent waiting to be exploited, combined to produce a prevailing materialism and an American drive bent as much, if not more, on money, property, and power than was true of the Old World from which we had fled.
    ― Barbara W. Tuchman
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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.
    A Distant Mirror
    ― Barbara W. Tuchman
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  • The system was aided by the Church, whose natural interests allied it more to the great than to the meek.
    A Distant Mirror
    ― Barbara W. Tuchman
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  • The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard.
    ― Barbara W. Tuchman
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  • The writer's object is - or should be - to hold the reader's attention.
    ― Barbara W. 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 They are of two kinds: the library of published material, books, pamphlets, periodicals, and the archive of unpublished papers and documents.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 W. Tuchman
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  • To admit error and cut losses is rare among individuals, unknown among states.
    A Distant Mirror
    ― Barbara W. Tuchman
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  • To be a bestseller is not necessarily a measure of quality, but it is a measure of communication.
    ― Barbara W. Tuchman
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  • To ensure that no one gained an advantage over anyone else, commercial law [in the 14th century] prohibited innovation in tools or techniques, underselling below a fixed price, working late by artificial light, employing extra apprentices or wife and underage children, and advertising of wares or praising them to the detriment of others.
    ― Barbara W. Tuchman
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  • 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 in the next.
    ― Barbara W. Tuchman
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  • To put away one's own original thoughts in order to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost.
    ― Barbara W. Tuchman
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  • To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup.
    A Distant Mirror
    ― Barbara W. Tuchman
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  • Vainglory, however, no matter how much medieval Christianity insisted it was a sin, is a motor of mankind, no more eradicable than sex. As long as combat was desirable as the source of honor and glory, the knight had no wish to share it with the commoner, even for the sake of success.
    A Distant Mirror
    ― Barbara W. Tuchman
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  • Voluntary self-directed religion was more dangerous to the Church than any number of infidels.
    A Distant Mirror
    ― Barbara W. Tuchman
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  • What counts is not so much the fact as what the public perceives to be the fact.
    A Distant Mirror
    ― Barbara W. Tuchman
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  • 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 W. Tuchman
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  • What is government but an arrangement by which the many accept the authority of the few?
    A Distant Mirror
    ― Barbara W. Tuchman
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  • Whatever solace the Christian faith could give was balanced by the anxiety it generated.
    A Distant Mirror
    ― Barbara W. Tuchman
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  • When commerce with Moslems flourished, zeal for their massacre declined.
    A Distant Mirror
    ― Barbara W. Tuchman
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