Barbara W. Tuchman Quotes

Doctrine tied itself into infinite knots over the realities of sex.

Fussell, Paul. The Great War and Modern Memory. UK: Oxford University Press, 1975. p.175

When commerce with Moslems flourished, zeal for their massacre declined.

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

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.

For most people reform meant relief from ecclesiastical extortions.

History is the unfolding of miscalculations.

Left to face a hungry winter robbed of their hard-earned harvests, the people experienced their own warrior class not as protectors but ravagers.

Against men habituated to lawless force, violent punishment failed to bring the violence under control.

If it is not profitable for the common good that authority should be retained, it ought to be relinquished.

To admit error and cut losses is rare among individuals, unknown among states.

The ills and disorders of the 14th century could not be without consequence. Times were to grow worse over the next fifty-odd years until at some imperceptible moment, by the some mysterious chemistry, energies were refreshed, ideas broke out of the mold of the Middle Ages into new realms, and humanity found itself redirected.

In the midst of events there is no perspective.

Chroniclers habitually matched numbers to the awesomeness of the event.

Whatever the fiasco, aplomb is unbroken. Mistakes, failures, stupidities and other causes of disaster mysteriously vanish. Disasters are recorded with care and pride and become transmuted into things of beauty. Official histories record every move in monumental and infinite detail but the details serve to obscure.