Barbara W. Tuchman Quotes

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

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

In the midst of events there is no perspective.

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.

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

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.

To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup.

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

If all were equalized by death, as the medieval idea constantly emphasized, was it not possible that inequalities on earth were contrary to the will of God?

Perhaps by this time the 14th century was not quite sane. If enlightened self-interest is the criterion of sanity, in the verdict of Michelet, “no epoch was more naturally mad.”

For most people reform meant relief from ecclesiastical extortions.

What counts is not so much the fact as what the public perceives to be the fact.

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

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.”

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