Barbara W. Tuchman Quotes

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

The Hundred Years' War, like the crises of the Church in the same period, broke apart medieval unity.

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

Chroniclers habitually matched numbers to the awesomeness of the event.

On being shown a relic said to be a bone of St. Elizabeth, he (Sigismund) turned it over and remarked that it could just as well be that of a dead cobbler.

Governments do not like to face radical remedies; it is easier to let politics predominate.

History is the unfolding of miscalculations.

What is government but an arrangement by which the many accept the authority of the few?

Economic man and sensual man are not suppressible.

Nothing is more certain than death and nothing uncertain but its hour.

For belligerent purposes, the 14th century, like the 20th, commanded a technology more sophisticated than the mental and moral capacity that guided its use.

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.

Voluntary self-directed religion was more dangerous to the Church than any number of infidels.

For most people reform meant relief from ecclesiastical extortions.

When reproached for spending too much time with books and clerks, Charles answered, “As long as knowledge is honored in this country, so long will it prosper.”