Barbara W. Tuchman Quotes - Page 2

I will only mention that the independent power of words to affect the writing of history is a thing to be watched out for. They have an almost frightening autonomous power to produce in the mind of the reader an image or idea that was not in the mind of the writer. Obviously they operate this way in all forms of writing, but history is particularly sensitive because one has a duty to be accurate, and careless use of words can leave a false impression one had not intended.

The overpowering unimportance of this MAKES ME SPEECHLESS. – Speaker of the House of Representatives Thomas Reed

The art of oratory was considered part of the equipment of a statesman.

Proper society did not think about MAKING money, only about spending it.

Connection" was the cement of the governing class.

How much does a man's effort depend upon the age in which his work is cast? Pope Clement VII

His only weakness was the habit of prophesying war within the next fortnight. George Bernard Shaw

Each one of us is serious individually, but together we become frivolous.

If the historian will submit himself to his material instead of trying to impose himself on his material, then the material will ultimately speak to him and supply the answers.

Books are ... companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of mind. Books are humanity in print.

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.

He was always the bridge, between men as well as between ideas.

In writing I am seduced by the sound of words and by the interaction of their sound and sense.

He believed interim reforms were necessary in order to fix the worker for his destiny.

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.

Policy was not reconsidered because the governing group had no habit of purposeful consultation.

Government was rarely more than a choice between the disastrous and the unpalatable.

Now according to German logic, a declaration of war was found to be unnecessary because of imaginary bombings

The author says one patrician English leader saw his relationship with the populace thusly: He wasn't responsible TO them. He was responsible FOR them. He was responsible for their care.

Even the respectable have a small anarchist hidden on the inside.

No single characteristic ever overtakes an entire society.

Enormity of the stakes became the new self-hypnosis.

Duty was not untinged by ambition.

The Englishman, as an American observed, felt himself the best-governed citizen in the world, even when in opposition he believed the incumbents were ruining the country.

Vainglory, however, no matter how much medieval Christianity insisted it was a sin, is a motor of mankind, no more eradicable than sex.

The writer of history, I believe, has a number of duties vis-à-vis the reader, if he wants to keep him reading. The first is to distill. He must do the preliminary work for the reader, assemble the information, make sense of it, select the essential, discard the irrelevant- above all, discard the irrelevant - and put the rest together so that it forms a developing dramatic narrative. Narrative, it has been said , is the lifeblood of history. To offer a mass of undigested facts, of names not identified and places not located, is of no use to the reader and is simple laziness on the part of the author, or pedantry to show how much he has read.

Advice to young Samuel Gompers that might apply in many other areas: "Learn from socialism, but don't join it.

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

In individuals as in nations, contentment is silent, which tends to unbalance the historical record.

A reformer exhorted children that they would succeed where he and his colleagues had failed with the charge: "Live for that better day.

What other country has had the privilege of making the world's heart beat faster?

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

William McKinley was a man made to be managed.

He wanted AFFIRMATION rather than INFORMATION.

His one essay in love had exhausted his powers in that direction.

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.

The process of gaining power employs means which degrade or brutalize the seeker, who awakes to find that power has been possessed at the cost of virtue or moral purpose lost.

One Cardinal entered his cathedral for the first time at his funeral.

All this visible greatness was really one with Nineveh and Tyre.

When meeting criticism, he would regard it not as something to resent but as a thing to be examined, like an interesting beetle. "That's a curious view, not uninteresting.

He believed that rank without power was a sham.

To those who think them selves strong, force always seems the easiest solution.

The limitation prompting folly " was an attitude of superiority so dense as to be impenetrable.

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