Barbara W. Tuchman Quotes

The writer's object should be to hold the reader's attention. I want the reader to turn the page and keep on turning until the end. This is accomplished only when the narrative moves steadily ahead, not when it comes to a weary standstill, overloaded with every item uncovered in the research.

Books are humanity in print.

Books are ... companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of mind. Books are humanity in print.

Chief among the forces affecting political folly is lust for power, named by Tacitus as "the most flagrant of all passions.

Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female.

Vainglory, however, no matter how much medieval Christianity insisted it was a sin, is a motor of mankind, no more eradicable than sex.

The reality of a question is inevitably more complicated than we would like to suppose.

A great imperative imparts a wonderful impulse to the spirit.

An event of great agony is bearable only in the belief that it will bring about a better world. When it does not, as in the aftermath of another vast calamity in 1914-18, disillusion is deep and moves on to self-doubt and self-disgust.