Barbara Tuchman Quotes

United States, Historian
January 30, 1912 – February, 6, 1989.

Barbara Wertheim Tuchman (/ˈtʌkmən/; January 30, 1912 – February 6, 1989) was an American historian and author. She won the Pulitzer Prize twice, for The Guns of August (1962), a best-selling history of the prelude to and the first month of World War I, and Stilwell and the American Experience in China (1971), a biography of General Joseph Stilwell. Tuchman focused on writing popular history.

Also known as Author, Writer

Honor wears different coats to different eyes.

Barbara Tuchman
- Different
- Eyes
- Honor
War is the unfolding of miscalculations.

Barbara Tuchman
- War
- Unfolding

The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard.

Barbara Tuchman
- Past
- Friend
- Tree
Books are humanity in print.

Barbara Tuchman
- Humanity
- Books
- Print
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.

Barbara Tuchman
- History
- Science
- Thought
Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library.

Barbara Tuchman
- Me
- Door
- Library
Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip.

Barbara Tuchman
- Mind
- Military
- Dead
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 Tuchman

To put away one's own original thoughts in order to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost.

Barbara Tuchman
- Up
- Book
- Thoughts
To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.

Barbara Tuchman
- Food
- Muse
- Shelter
The fleet sailed to its war base in the North Sea, headed not so much for some rendezvous with glory as for rendezvous with discretion.

Barbara Tuchman
- War
- History
- Sea
Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.

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

Barbara Tuchman
- Discipline
- Habit
- Easy
Diplomacy means all the wicked devices of the Old World, spheres of influence, balances of power, secret treaties, triple alliances, and, during the interim period, appeasement of Fascism.

Barbara Tuchman
- World
- Power
- Period

For me, the card catalog has been a companion all my working life. To leave it is like leaving the house one was brought up in.

Barbara Tuchman
- Life
- Up
- House
Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.

Barbara Tuchman
- Great
- Mind
- Military