Quotes by Barbara W. Tuchman

About Barbara W. Tuchman:

Barbara Wertheim Tuchman was an American historian and author. She won the Pulitzer Prize twice, for The Guns of August (1963), a best-selling history of the prelude to and the first month of World War I, and Stilwell and the American Experience in China (1972), a biography of General Joseph Stilwell.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

Barbara W. Tuchman

An event of great agony is bearable only in the belief that it will bring about a better world. When it does not, as in the aftermath of another vast calamity in 1914-18, disillusion is deep and moves on to self-doubt and self-disgust.

Barbara W. Tuchman

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

Barbara W. Tuchman

Disaster is rarely as pervasive as it seems from recorded accounts. The fact of being on the record makes it appear continuous and ubiquitous whereas it is more likely to have been sporadic both in time and place. Besides, persistence of the normal i...

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

A great imperative imparts a wonderful impulse to the spirit.

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

Irritability was an occupational disease. Intolerant and intolerable belong in the same category.

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 ...

Barbara W. Tuchman

Clearly prize money received more serious attention than scurvy or signals.

Barbara W. Tuchman

Civilians who volunteer generally wish to escape, not to share, privatizations worse than their own.

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

Human beings, like plans, prove fallible in the presence of those ingredients that are missing in maneuvers - danger, death, and live ammunition.

Barbara W. Tuchman

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.

Barbara W. Tuchman

Chief among the forces affecting political folly is lust for power, named by Tacitus as "the most flagrant of all passions.

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. I...

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

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

Barbara W. Tuchman

If I had taken a doctoral degree, it would have stifled any writing capacity.

Barbara W. Tuchman

I want the reader to turn the page and keep on turning until the end.

Barbara W. Tuchman

Author Bio

  • NameBarbara W. Tuchman
  • DescriptionAmerican historian and author
  • AliasesBarbara Wertheim Tuchman; Barbara Wertheim
  • BornJanuary 30, 1912
  • DiedFebruary 6, 1989
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionJournalist; Historian; Writer
  • AwardsPulitzer Prize For General Non-Fiction; National Book Award