Inspirational Quotes by Barbara W. Tuchman (American Historian)

Barbara Wertheim Tuchman (1912–89) was an American popular historian whose captivating narrative style, rigorous research, and deep historical insight brought the past vividly to life for a wide readership.

Born in New York City into a distinguished banking family, Tuchman earned a BA from Radcliffe College in 1933. She began her career as a research assistant for the Institute of Pacific Relations (1933–35.) From 1935 to 1939, she worked as a writer and correspondent for The Nation, covering major global events such as the Spanish Civil War while also contributing to other publications.

Her focus soon shifted toward historical writing. She gained early recognition with The Zimmermann Telegram (1958,) a gripping account of the diplomatic intrigue that helped push the United States into World War I. Her major breakthrough came with The Guns of August (1962; Pulitzer,) a dramatic and detailed chronicle of the first month of World War I.

She continued exploring the pre-war world with The Proud Tower: World Before the War, 1890–1914 (1966.) She earned a second Pulitzer for Stilwell and the American Experience in China (1971; Pulitzer.) Other significant works include A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (1978,) The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam (1984,) and The First Salute: A View of the Revolution (1988.)

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Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip.
—Barbara W. Tuchman
Topics: Conflict

Reasonable orders are easy enough to obey; it is capricious, bureaucratic or plain idiotic demands that form the habit of discipline.
—Barbara W. Tuchman
Topics: Discipline

No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision.
—Barbara W. Tuchman
Topics: Government

War is the unfolding of miscalculations.
—Barbara W. Tuchman
Topics: War

To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse. They are of two kinds: the library of published material, books, pamphlets, periodicals, and the archive of unpublished papers and documents.
—Barbara W. Tuchman
Topics: Libraries

Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library.
—Barbara W. Tuchman
Topics: Libraries

To put away one’s own original thoughts in order to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost.
—Barbara W. Tuchman
Topics: Innovation, Originality

Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced.
—Barbara W. Tuchman
Topics: Experience

Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.
—Barbara W. Tuchman
Topics: Revolutionaries, Revolutions, Revolution

Friendship of a kind that cannot easily be reversed tomorrow must have its roots in common interests and shared beliefs.
—Barbara W. Tuchman
Topics: Friendship

Without books the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are the engines of change, windows on the world, “Lighthouses” as the poet said “erected in the sea of time.” They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind, Books are humanity in print.
—Barbara W. Tuchman
Topics: Books, Reading, Literature, Book

Honor wears different coats to different eyes.
—Barbara W. Tuchman
Topics: Honor

Diplomacy means all the wicked devices of the Old World, spheres of influence, balances of power, secret treaties, triple alliances, and, during the interwar period, appeasement of Fascism.
—Barbara W. Tuchman
Topics: Diplomacy

Inspirational Quotes by Barbara W. Tuchman (American Historian)

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